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PREFACE 


SELECTIONS usually need no justifications. Some 
justification, however, of the treatment accorded 
Spinoza’s Hthics may be necessary in this place. The 
object in taking the Hthics as much as possible out 
of the geometrical form, was not to improve upon the 
author’s text; it was to give the lay reader a text of 
Spinoza he would find pleasanter to read and easier to 
understand. To the practice of popularization, Spi- 
noza, one may confidently feel, would not be averse. 
He himself gave a short popular statement of his 
philosophy in the Political Treatise. 

The lay reader of philosophy is chiefly, if not wholly, 
interested in grasping a philosophic point of view. He 
is not interested in highly meticulous details, and still 
less is he interested in checking up the author’s state- 
ments to see if the author is consistent with himself. 
He takes such consistency, even if unwarrantedly, for 
granted. A continuous reading of the original Ethics, 
even on a single topic, is impossible, The subject- 
matter is coherent, but the propositions do not hang 
together. By omitting the formal statement of the 
propositions; by omitting many of the demonstrations 
and almost all cross-references; by grouping related 
sections of the Hthics (with selections from the Letters 
and the Improvement of the Understanding) under 
sectional headings, the text has been made more con- 


Vv 


vi PREFACE 


tinuous. It is the only time, probably, dismembering 
a treatise actually made it more unified. 

In an Appendix, the sources of the selections from 
the Ethics are summarily indicated. It would be a 
meaningless burden on the text to make full acknowl- 
edgments in footnotes. For the same reason, there 
has been almost no attempt made to show, by means 
of the conventional devices, the re-arrangements and 
abridgements that have been made. Every care has 
been taken not to distort in any way the meaning of 
the text. And that is all that is important in a volume 
of this kind. 

Wherever possible Spinoza’s own chapter headings 
have been retained; and some of the sectional headings 
have either been taken from, or have been based upon 
expressions in the text. It would have been more in 
keeping with contemporary form to use the title On 
Historical Method, or The New History instead of Of 
the Interpretation of Scripture; a chapter on Race 
Superiority would sound more important than one on 
The Vocation of the Hebrews; but such modernizing 
changes were not made because the aim has been to 
give the reader a text as faithful to the original as the 
character of this volume would allow. 

The selections have been taken from Elwes’ trans- 
lation of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, A Political 
Treatise and the Improvement of the Understanding; 
and from White’s translation of the Ethics. These 
translations are no longer in copyright and hence it was 
not necessary to secure permission from the publishers 
to use them. Nonetheless, grateful acknowledgment 
is their just due. 


PREFACE Vil 


White, in his translation, uses, not altogether without 
reason, the stilted term “affect” instead of the natural 
English term “emotion.” “Affect? is closer to the 
Latin and it more clearly indicates the metaphysical 
status of the emotions as “modes” or “affectiones” of 
Substance. Still, practically no one has followed White 
in his usage. The reasons are not difficult to discover. 
Besides being a stilted term, having no legitimate Eng- 
lish status, “affect”? very often makes the text extremely 
obscure, even unintelligible to one who has no ante- 
cedent knowledge of it, because besides having also its 
ordinary English meaning, “affect”? is used by White 
to mean “mode” or “modification” (“affection”) as 
well. In the circumstances, therefore, I thought it 
advisable to change “affect” to “emotion” and “affec- 
tion” to “modification” or “mode.” I also corrected 
White’s translation of the Definition of Attribute by 
deleting the word “if.” In spite of the need for these 
changes, it was desirable to use White’s translation 
because it is the most accurate and elegant extant. 

Furthermore, in both White and Elwes I have con- 
sistently capitalized the term Nature, in accordance 
with Spinoza’s Latin text; White and Elwes capitalize 
it only desultorily. I have made some slight changes 
in Elwes’ mid-Victorian punctuation and White’s all- 
too-faithful paragraphing. The Latin paragraphs of 
the Hthics are extremely long. These changes are all 
external and as far as I can see thoroughly legitimate 
as well as justified. The very slight and very occa- 
sional internal changes I have made—other than those 
already accounted for—I have indicated by square 
brackets. 


viii PREFACE 


I am indebted to Mr. Houston Peterson, of Columbia 
University, for suggesting to me the idea of arranging 
a volume of selections from Spinoza. I am alone 
responsible, however, for the actual selections and 
arrangements, and for the idea of taking the Ethics 
out of its geometrical form. Professor Morris R. 
Cohen, of the College of the City of New York, read 
this volume in manuscript; I am indebted to him for 
some valuable suggestions. I am also indebted very 
greatly to a friend (who prefers not to be acknowl- 
edged) for invaluable help in getting the manuscript 
into shape. 

JOSEPH RATNER. 

October, 1926. 


CONTENTS 


PRYOR CCID Yad ala eR GFE De AHO Ec RA A Ie NN PY 
PELE EA OR OPENOZA san Miia e ella ed ile toca ee xl 
INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA . . XXVii 
FIRST PART 
ON GOD 

CHAPTER 
I. Or SUPERSTITION 4) Oe TO A ay 3 
IJ. OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE . 11 
Peon PROPHETS LAND ) PROPHECY... \0). i 86 
IV. OF THE VOCATION OF THE HEBREWS . . 64 
VeRO Moe DE Ear DIVINE GL AW yoshi ios tee ie amaze 
iO TH OMREMONIALE LAW) cl) hells ol ca (Om ene 
VII. Or Mrrac.ueEs Miser dar ctu an aMat i UASte SLOSS 
Vil eORE SHEP DIVINE] NATURE Vi ish vom conc) bee 


SECOND PART 


ON MAN 


IX. THe NATURE AND ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN 


MIND Bee Oa enue Woche contests LOG 

X. THe NatuRE AND EXTENT OF HUMAN 
KNOWLEDGE AIDC Hi Aa vaks hdd Aan ae aL KGS PAG 
XI) DETERMINISM AND MorRArs’.) 9...) . 191 
XII. Tuer ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE Emotions 211 
NIII. Tue PsycHotocy oF THE EMoTIONS . . 236 


ix 


x CONTENTS 


THIRD PART 
ON MAN’S WELL-BEING 

CHAPTER PAGE 
XIV. Or Human BONDAGE) eee eae 
XV. Tue FouNDATIONS OF THE MoraAt LIFE . 266 
XVI. OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF A STATE. . . 297 
XVII. Or SUPREME AUTHORITIES 0. )2 0) peo ne 
XVIII. FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH . . 333 
XIX. Or HuMAN’ FREEDOM (27\(0))0 es 

XX. Or HuMan BLESSEDNESS AND THE ETER- 
NITY OF THE MIND) 05) oie 


APPENDIX: (0600000) 6 0 


THE LIFE OF SPINOZA 


BARUCH DE SPINOZA was born into the Jewish com- 
munity of Amsterdam on November 24, 1632. His 
parents were Jews who had fled, along with many 
others, from the vicious intolerance of the Inquisition 
to the limited and hesitant freedom of Holland. At 
the time Spinoza was born, the Jewish refugees had 
already established themselves to a certain extent in 
their new home. They had won, for example, the 
important right to build a synagogue. Still, they did 
not enjoy the complete freedom and peace of mind of 
an independent and securely protected people. Al- 
though one could be a Jew in Amsterdam, one had to 
be a Jew with considerable circumspection. What- 
ever might prove in any way offensive to the political 
authority had to be scrupulously eschewed. For, as 
is always the case, minority groups which are simply 
tolerated have to suffer for the offenses of any of 
their members. The Jews of Amsterdam thoroughly 
understood this. They knew that any significant de- 
fault on the part of one member of their community 
would not, in all likelihood, be considered by the au- 
thorities to be a default of that one person alone— 
a failing quite in the order of human nature; they 
knew it would be considered a manifestation of an 
essential vice characteristic of the whole community. 


And the whole community would have to suffer, in 
xi 


xii THE LIFE OF SPINOZA 


consequence, an exaggerated punishment which the 
individual delinquent himself may well not merit. 

It was inevitable that the intellectual life of the 
Jews of Amsterdam should bear the marks of their 
inner and outer social constraints. Their intellec- 
tual life was cramped and ineffectual. Indiscriminate 
erudition, not independent thought, was all the Jewish 
leaders, connected in one way or another with the 
Synagogue, were able to achieve. It was far safer 
to cling to the innocuous past than it was to strike out 
boldly into the future. Any independence of thought 
that was likely to prove socially dangerous as well 
as schismatic was promptly suppressed. The humili- 
ation and excommunication (circa 1640) of the in- 
decisive martyr Uriel da Costa when he ventured to 
entertain doctrines that were not orthodox, were 
prompted as much by political as by religious con- 
siderations. It is true, many of the faithful were at- 
tracted by Cabbalistic wonders and the strange hope 
of being saved from a bitter exile by a Messianic 
Sabbatai Zevi. But these wayward deviations, in 
reality not so very far removed from orthodox tradi- 
tion, exhibited only the more clearly the fearsome in- 
ner insecurity which a strained formalism in thought 
and habit bravely attempted to cover. 

In such social and intellectual atmosphere Spinoza 
grew up. Of his early life, practically nothing is 
known. His parents, we know, were at least fairly 
well-to-do, for Spinoza received a good education. And 
we know that he was, when about fifteen years of age, 
one of the most brilliant and promising of Rabbi Saul 
Levi Morteira’s pupils. Everyone who then knew Spi. 


THE LIFE OF SPINOZA xili 


noza expected great things of him. He proved himself 
to be a very acute rabbinical student; at that early age 
already somewhat too critical, if anything, to suit the 
orthodox. But all felt reasonably confident he would 
become a distinguished Rabbi, and perhaps a great 
commentator of the Bible. Of course, of the orthodox 
sort. 

But the Rabbis were early disillusioned. Spinoza 
soon found the learning of the Synagogue insufficient 
and unsatisfactory. He sought the wisdom of secular 
philosophy and science. But in order to satisfy his 
intellectual desires it was necessary to study Latin. 
And Latin was not taught in the Synagogue. 

An anonymous German taught Spinoza the rudi- 
ments of the language that was to enable him to enter 
into the important current of modern ideas especially 
embodied in the philosophy of Descartes. Francis 
Van den Ende gave him a thorough technical, not lit- 
erary, mastery of it. And Van den Ende taught Spi- 
noza much more besides. He acquainted him with the 
literature of antiquity; he gave him a sound knowledge 
of the contemporary fundamentals of physiology and 
physics; and it was he possibly, who introduced him 
to the philosophy of Descartes and the lyrical phil- 
osophic speculation of Bruno. He did much also (we 
may easily infer) to encourage the independence of 
mind and the freedom in thinking Spinoza had already 
manifested in no inconsiderable degree. For although 
this Van den Ende was a Catholic physician and Latin 
master by profession, he was a free thinker in spirit 
and reputation. And if we are to believe the horrified 
public suspicion, he taught a select few of his Latin 


XIV THE LIFE OF SPINOZA 


pupils the grounds of his heterodox belief. As one 
can easily understand, to study Latin with Van den 
Ende was not the most innocent thing one could do. 
Certainly, to become a favorite pupil and assistant 
teacher of Van den Ende’s was, socially, decidedly 
bad. But Spinoza was not deterred by the possible 
social consequences of his search for knowledge and 
truth. He took full advantage of his opportunities and 
did not hesitate to follow wherever his master might 
lead. 

Van den Ende was also something of a political 
adventurer; he finally paid the unsuccessful conspira- 
tor’s price on the gallows in Paris. It is not at all un- — 
likely that Spinoza’s hard-headed political and ethical 
realism was, in significant measure, due to his early in- 
timacy with his variously gifted and interesting Latin 
master. We know that Spinoza was at least strongly 
attracted, in later life, by the Italian political insur- 
gent Masaniello, for Spinoza drew a portrait of him- 
self in the Italian’s costume. Machiavelli’s influence, 
too, upon Spinoza was very great—an influence that 
would but be a continuation of Van den Ende’s. 

Spinoza may have been indebted to Van den Ende 
for one other thing: his only recorded romance. There 
is some question about this indebtedness because tradi- 
tion does not speak very confidently, in some essentials, 
about Van den Ende’s daughter Clara Maria. Clara, 
tradition is agreed, was intellectually and artistically 
well endowed, although she was not very good looking. 
In her father’s absence on political affairs she took his 
place in the school, teaching music as well as Latin. 
But tradition is somewhat disconcerting when it comes 


THE LIFE OF SPINOZA XV 


to Clara’s age when Spinoza knew her. According 
to some chronological researches, the fair object of 
Spinoza’s supposed devotion, was only twelve years 
old. Hardly of an age to warrant Spinoza’s love, un- 
less he loved her as Dante loved Beatrice. A somewhat 
improbable possibility. The tradition that is less spar- 
ing of Clara’s age is, however, even more sparing of 
her character: the success of Spinoza’s supposed rival— 
a fellow-student by name, Kerkrinck—is attributed to 
the seductive powers of a pearl necklace. In spite of 
the fact that tradition reckons this gift to have been 
of decisive importance, one does not like to believe 
that a girl of high intellectual and artistic ability could 
be so easily and fatefully overcome by a mere trinket. 
Still less does one like to believe that Spinoza fell in 
love with a girl whose mind was so far removed from 
the joys that are eternal and spiritual. But, of course, 
it is conceivable that the girl took the trinket sym- 
bolically; or else that Spinoza, who had given all his 
time to rabbinical and philosophical studies was, in 
the circumstances, quite justifiably deceived. 

Spinoza had not yet been graduated from his student 
days when the Synagogue thought him a fit object for 
official censure and threat. It seems Spinoza was be- 
trayed into overt indiscretion by two fellow-students 
from the Synagogue, who asked for his opinion regard- 
ing the existence of angels, the corporeality of God and 
the immortality of the soul. Spinoza’s answers were 
not complete, but incomplete as they were, they yet 
revealed a mind that was, to the faithful, shockingly 
astray from the orthodox path. Spinoza was to have 
elaborated upon his answers at a later date but the 


XVi THE LIFE OF SPINOZA 


students had heard, apparently, quite enough. Instead 
of returning to Spinoza they went to the authorities of 
the Synagogue. The authorities were quite disposed 
by Spinoza’s association with Van den Ende and his 
perceptible neglect of ceremonial observances, to be- 
lieve him capable of any intellectual villainy. They 
promptly set about to reclaim the erring soul. Report 
has it they sought two means: they offered Spinoza 
an annuity of 1,000 florins if he would, in all overt 
ways, speech and action, conform to the established 
opinions and customs of the Synagogue; or, if he did 
not see the wisdom and profit of compliance, they 
threatened to isolate him by excommunication. Again 
social politics as much as established religion demanded 
the action the Synagogue took. Their experience with 
Uriel da Costa was still very fresh in their minds and 
they must have felt fairly confident that Spinoza would 
be warned by the fate of his heretical predecessor if 
not counseled by the wisdom of the Fathers. But 
Spinoza was of a firmness they did not reckon on. He 
did not hearken to their censure nor cower at their 
threat. The thirty days or so in which he was given 
to reform passed without discovering in him any 
change. Excommunication had to be pronounced. 
When barely twenty-four years old, Spinoza found 
himself cut off from the race of Israel with all the 
prescribed curses of excommunication upon his head. 

Spinoza was not present when excommunication was 
pronounced upon him. He had left Amsterdam to stay 
with some Collegiant friends on the Ouwerkerk road, 
for, so one tradition relates, an attempt had been made 
by one of the over-righteous upon Spinoza’s life soon 


THE LIFE OF SPINOZA XVIl 


after he became an object of official displeasure. Al- 
though Spinoza was, throughout his life, ready to suffer 
the consequences of his opinions and actions, he at no 
time had the least aspiration to become a martyr. When 
Spinoza heard of his excommunication he sent a spirited 
and unyielding reply. The spirit if not the words of 
that reply (not yet discovered) eventually made its 
way into the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. For the 
rest of his life, whenever he had occasion to refer to 
the Jews, Spinoza referred to them as he did to the 
Gentiles—a race to which he did not belong. And 
immediately, with the perfect grace and humor of a 
cultured mind, he changed his name from Baruch to 
Benedict, quite confident one can be as blessed in 
Latin as in Hebrew. | 

The subsequent course of Spinoza’s life was almost 
completely untroubled, though it was unmitigatingly 
austere. He took up the trade of polishing lenses as a 
means of earning his simple bread. He was some- 
what influenced in his decision by the advice in the 
Ethics of the Fathers that every one should do some 
manual work. But it was also quite the fashion at that 
period for learned men, interested in science, to polish 
lenses, as a hobby of course, not as a means of support. 
Spinoza’s choice was not altogether wise in spite of its 
learned associations and the fact that he soon gained 
an enviable reputation as a young scientist. The early 
recognition Spinoza received from men like Henry 
Oldenburg, the first secretary of the Royal Society, 
from Robert Boyle and Huyghens, was hardly adequate 
recompense for the fine dust he ground which ag- 
gravated his inherited tuberculosis and undoubtedly 


XVIll THE LIFE OF SPINOZA 


considerably hastened his death. Spinoza’s accom- 
plishment in his chosen trade was not merely practical. 
Many looked forward, with warranted confidence, to 
the time when Spinoza would make a distinguished 
contribution to the science of optics. But the only 
strictly scientific work Spinoza left behind (long con- 
sidered to have been lost) was a short treatise on the 
rainbow. 

All Spinoza’s intellectual energy went into service of 
his philosophy. His earliest philosophical work (re- 
discovered (1862) in translated Dutch manuscript) 
was a Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being. 
It is a fragmentary, uneven work, chiefly valuable for 
the insight it gives into the workings and development 
of Spinoza’s mind. The Ethics, in the completed form 
in which we have it (no manuscript of it is extant) has 
the incredible appearance of a system of philosophy 
sprung full-grown from an unhesitating mind. Even 
a most cursory reading of the Short Treatise completely 
dispels this preposterous illusion. The Ethics was 
the product of prolonged and critical toil. 

But just how prolonged it is difficult to say. For 
already as early as 1665 almost four-fifths of the 
Ethics seems to have been written. We learn as much 
from a letter Spinoza wrote to one of his friends prom- 
ising to send him the “third part” of his philosophy up 
to the eightieth proposition. From the letter it is 
fairly clear that at that time the Ethics was divided 
into three, not five, parts. Also, in letters written that 
same year to William Blyenbergh one finds expressed 
some of the chief conclusions published five years later 
in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. And Spinoza 


THE LIFE OF SPINOZA XIX 


wrote, at this early period, not conjecturally or specu- 
latively, but as one writes who knows the firm and 
tested grounds of his belief. Why the Ethics, in final 
form, began to citculate privately only two or three 
years before Spinoza’s death, and why his work on 
The Improvement of the Understanding and _ his 
Political Treatise were left unfinished, must remain 
something of an insoluble philosophico-literary mys- 
tery. 

The only book Spinoza published in his own life- 
time above his own name was his Principles of Des- 
cartes’ Philosophy Geometrically Demonstrated with 
an appendix of Cogitata Metaphysica which he had 
dictated to a youth (one “Cesarius’’) “to whom (he) 
did not wish to teach (his) own opinions openly.” 
Discretion, as he had already learned and later form- 
ally stated and proved, was not inconsonant with ra- 
tional valor. The only other book Spinoza published 
in his lifetime—the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus— 
bore on its title page Spinoza’s initials only, and the 
name of a fictitious Hamburg publisher. When Spi- 
noza heard, some time later, that a Dutch translation 
of this work was being prepared, he earnestly be- 
seeched his friends to forestall its publication (which 
they did) because only its Latin dress saved it from 
being officially proscribed. It was then an open secret 
who the author was. Spinoza’s personal rule to incur 
as little official displeasure as possible made him aban. 
don his final literary project entertained in 1675. When 
he began negotiations for the publication of the Ethics 
a rumor spread that he had in press a book proving 
that God does not exist. Complaint was lodged witb 


XX THE LIFE OF SPINOZA 


the prince and magistrates. “The stupid Cartesians,” 
Spinoza wrote Oldenburg “being suspected of favoring 
me, endeavored to remove the aspersion by abusing 
every where my opinions and writings, a course which 
they still pursue.” In the circumstances, Spinoza 
thought it wisest to delay publication till matters would 
change. But, apparently, they did not change, or 
change sufficiently. The Ethics was first published 
about a year after Spinoza’s death. 

In spite of the consensus of adverse, and somewhat 
vicious opinion, the author of the Tractatus did find 
favor in the eyes of some. The Elector Palatine, Karl 
Ludwig, through his secretary Fabritius, offered Spin- 
oza the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg (1673). But 
Spinoza graciously declined it. Although a more wel- 
come or more honorable opportunity to teach could 
not be conceived, it had never been his ambition to 
leave his secluded station in life for one involving pub- 
lic obligations. Even in his secluded corner, he found 
he had aroused more public attention and sentiment 
than was altogether consonant with the peace and re- 
tirement he sought. Besides, he did not know how 
well he could fulfill the desires of the Elector by teach- 
ing nothing that would tend to discomfit established 
religion. 

Spinoza had, in his young days, learned what ex- 
treme dangers one must expect to encounter in a right- 
eous community become inimical. In his last years, he 
experienced a stern and tragic reminder. Two of 
Spinoza’s best friends, Cornelius and Jan de Witt, who 
had by a change in political fortune become the enemies 
of the people, were brutally murdered (1672). Spinoza 


THE LIFE OF SPINOZA xxi 


for once, when this occurred, lost his habitual phil- 
osophic calm. He could restrain neither his tears nor 
his anger. He had to be forcibly prevented from 
leaving his house to post a bill, at the scene of the 
murder, denouncing the criminal mob. A somewhat 
similar crisis recurred shortly afterwards when 
Spinoza returned from a visit to the hostile French 
camp. The object of his mission is not unequivocally 
known. Some think it was to meet the Prince of 
Condé solely in his private capacity of philosopher. 
It is certain Spinoza was advised the French King 
would acknowledge a dedicated book by means of a 
pension—an advice Spinoza did not act upon. Others 
think his mission was political. His reputation as a 
distinguished man would have made him a very likely 
ambassador. This conjecture would seem more prob- 
able, however, if the de Witts, his intimate friends, 
had been still in political power, instead of in their 
graves. But whatever Spinoza’s mission was, when 
he returned to the Hague, the populace branded him a 
French spy. Spinoza’s landlord feared his house would 
be wrecked, by an infuriated mob. This time Spinoza 
exerted the calming influence. He assured Van der 
Spijck that if any attempt were made on the house 
he would leave it and face the mob, even if they should 
deal with him as they did with the unfortunate de 
Witts. He was a good republican as all knew. And 
those in high political authority knew the purpose of 
his journey. Fortunately, popular suspicion and anger 
dissipated this time without a sacrifice. Still, the in- 
cident showed quite clearly that though Spinoza did 
not desire to be a martyr, he was no more afraid to 


AXil THE LIFE OF SPINOZA 


die than he was to live for the principles he had at 
heart. 

Spinoza’s character, manifested in his life, has won 
the high admiration of every one not bitterly hostile 
to him. And even his enemies maintained and justified 
their hatred only by inventing calumnious falsehoods 
about him. Unfounded rumors of an evil nature be- 
gan to circulate during his lifetime, and naturally in- 
creased in virulence and volume after his death. At 
that period in human history, it was popularly recog- 
nized that nothing good could be true, and nothing 
vile could be false of an atheist—which was what 
Spinoza, of course, was reputed to be. Oldenburg 
even, for years unflaggingly profuse in expressions of 
devoted friendship and humble discipleship, an eager 
and fearless advocate (supposedly) of the truth, a 
friend who lamented the fact that the world was be- 
ing denied the invaluable products of Spinoza’s un- 
surpassed intellect, and who, therefore, constantly 
urged Spinoza, by all the advice of friendship, to pub- 
lish his work without delay, irrespective of popular 
prejudice—even Oldenburg began to conceive a far 
from complimentary opinion of Spinoza after the pub- 
lication of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus! So 
prevalent were the groundless rumors that the Lu- 
theran pastor, Colerus—the source of most of our in- 
formation—felt obliged in his very quaint summary 
biography to defend the life and character of Spinoza. 
To his everlasting credit, Colerus did this although 
he himself heartily detested Spinoza’s philosophy which 
he understood to be abhorrently blasphemous and 
atheistic. Colerus’ sources of information were the 


THE LIFE OF SPINOZA xxiii 


best: he spoke to all who knew Spinoza at the Hague; 
and he himself was intimate with the Van der Spijcks 
with whom Spinoza had lived the last five years of his 
life, and with whom Colerus was now living—in 
Spinoza’s very room. 

Spinoza’s courage and strength of mind are as im- 
pressively manifested in the constant daily life he lived 
as in the few severe crises he resolutely faced. For 
the twenty years of his excommunication he lived in 
comparative retirement, if not isolation. The frugality 
of his life bordered on asceticism. All his free time 
and energy Spinoza dedicated with unusual single- 
hearted devotion to the disinterested development of 
a philosophy he knew would not be very acceptable to 
the general or even special philosophic reader. His 
mode of life is all the more remarkable because it was 
not determined by embittered misanthropy or passion- 
ate abhorrence of the goods of the world. It was 
dictated solely by what he understood to be, in his 
circumstances, the reasonable life for him. Although 
he was an eager correspondent, and had many friends 
whom he valued above all things that are external to 
one’s own soul, his interest in his own work kept him 
from carrying on, for any length of time, an active 
social life. He believed, too, that it is part of the 
wisdom of life to refresh oneself with pleasant food 
and drink, with delicate perfumes and the soft beauty 
of growing things, with music and the theater, liter- 
ature and painting. But his own income was too slender 
to allow him much of these temperate riches of a 
rational life. And always, rather than exert himself 
to increase his income, he would decrease his ex- | 


XXIV THE LIFE OF SPINOZA 


penditure. Still, he no doubt enjoyed the little he had. 
He found very palatable, most likely, the simple food 
he himself prepared in later life; and he must have 
gained additional satisfaction from the thought that 
he was, because of his own cooking, living more safely 
within his means. The pipe he smoked occasionally 
(let us hope) was fragrant; the pint of wine a month 
very delectable. For mental recreation he read 
fairly widely in literature, observed the habits of in- 
sects, with the microscope as well as the naked eye. 
He also sometimes drew ink or charcoal sketches of 
his visitors and himself. A fairly plausible rumor has 
it that Rembrandt was his teacher. Unfortunately, all 
of Spinoza’s sketches were destroyed. 

Although Spinoza wanted to be independent and 
self-supporting he was not irrationally zealous about 
it. He did not accept all the financial help his friends 
were eager to give him, but he did accept some. One 
of his young friends, Simon de Vries, before his early 
death occurred, wanted to bequeath all of his estate to 
Spinoza. But Spinoza persuaded him not to deprive 
his own brother of his natural inheritance. Even the 
annual soo florins de Vries finally left him, Spinoza 
would not altogether accept, offering the plea that so 
much wealth would surely take his mind away from 
his philosophy. But he would accept 300 florins, a 
sum he felt would not be burdensome or dangerous to 
his soul. This annuity he regularly received until his 
death. His friends the de Witts, pensioned him too; 
the heirs to the estate contested Spinoza’s claim, where- 
upon Spinoza promptly withdrew it. This high-minded 
action corrected their covetousness, and from the de 


THE LIFE OF SPINOZA XXV 


Witts, too, he received financial help until his death. 

Spinoza’s relations with the humble folk he stayed 
with exhibited the modesty and grace of character that 
endeared him to his intimate friends. When he was 
tired working in his own room, he would frequently 
come down to smoke a pipe and chat with his landlady 
and landlord about the simple affairs that filled their 
lives. His speech was ‘‘sweet and easy;” his manner 
of a gentle, noble, beauty. Except for the occasion 
when the de Witts were murdered, Spinoza never 
showed himself either unduly merry or unduly sad. 
If ever he found that his emotions were likely to 
escape his wise control, he would withdraw until such 
danger had passed. We find the same characteristics 
exhibited in Spinoza’s correspondence. Although he 
found some of his correspondents sometimes very try- 
ing, he never failed to be as courteous and considerate 
as the circumstances would permit. Even when one 
Lambert de Velthuysen provoked his righteous indig- 
nation, Spinoza tempered his caustic reply before send- 
ing it off. 

Spinoza lived the ethics he wrote. As is the Ethics, 
so is his life pervaded by a simple grandeur. And as 
he lived, so did he die. He had not been feeling very 
well, and had sent for his friend and physician Dr. 
Ludwig Meyer. A chicken broth was ordered for 
Spinoza of which he partook quite healthily. No one 
suspected that he was this time fatally ill. He came 
down in the morning, and spoke for some time with his 
hosts. But when they returned from a visit that same 
afternoon (Sunday, Feb. 21, 1677) they learned the sad, 
surprising news that Spinoza had gently passed away, 
the only one by his bedside, his doctor and friend. 


XXVI THE LIFE OF SPINOZA 


Spinoza sought in his lifetime neither riches, nor 
sensual pleasure, nor fame. He wrote and published 
his books when he could and thought advisable be- 
cause part of his joy consisted in extending, as he 
said, a helping hand to others, in bringing them to see 
and understand things as he did. If they did not see, 
or obdurately refused to understand, he did not con- 
sider it part of his task to overcome them. He was 
animated by no missionary zeal. He was content to 
search for the truth and to explain what he found 
as best he could. The truth, he devoutly believed, 
would make us free. But it was truth that we under- 
stood, not truth that was forced upon us. He was 
quite satisfied to leave in his desk the manuscript of 
his Ethics. People in his lifetime did not want to listen 
to him. If ever they did after his death, they were 
cordially welcome to. In death as in life they would 
find him faithful to his ideal. 

Spinoza has often been likened to the old Hebrew 
prophets. He does not, it is true, exhort the people 
to follow in the path of righteousness; it is the phi- 
losopher’s task simply to show the way. But the 
morality Spinoza stands for is the old prophetic moral- 
ity purified and made consistent with itself. And 
Spinoza was, in his own time, as the prophets were 
in theirs, a heretic and a rebel, a voice calling in the 
wilderness—a wilderness that was later to become the 
very citadel of civilization. Excommunicated by the 
Jews and villified by the Gentiles during his lifetime, 
Spinoza has, since his death, been canonized by both 
alike as the most saintly and exalted of philosophers. 
Like his forerunners of old, Spinoza was a prophet im 
Israel, for Mankind. 


INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF 
SPINOZA 


I 


SPINOzA’s philosophy has suffered not a little from 
the highly abstruse and technical form in which the 
Ethics 1s written. Some, who are not inured to the hard- 
ships of philosophy, quite naturally jump to the con- 
clusion that its formidable geometry contains only the 
most inscrutable of philosophic mysteries; and a wise 
humility persuades them to forego the unexampled en- 
lightenment a mastery of the difficulties would yield. 
Others, who are devoutly wedded to what they consider 
the unreservedly empirical character of modern (that 
is, true) philosophy, avoid the Ethics because they are 
convinced, on general principles, that only a mind 
hopelessly lost in the dark night of medieval specula- 
tion could conceive of philosophy in such ultra-deduc- 
tive fashion. Reason was for so long servile to idle 
theology, it is not at all surprising that a work ex- 
emplifying reason to such high degree as does the 
Ethics, should receive scant respect from intrepid 
empiricists. It is so easy to confuse the rationaliza- 
tions of reason with the nature of reason itself. 

Spinoza did not, however, chose the geometrical order 
because he thought his philosophy too profound for 
ordinary exposition; nor did he chose it because he 


was enmeshed in medieval philosophic speculation. He 
XXVvil 


XXVIil INTRODUCTION 


chose it because his fundamental philosophic aim was 
to establish ethics on a thoroughly tested, scientific 
foundation; and geometry, an exemplar of all mathema- 
tical science, most completely embodied, at that time, 
the highest scientific ideal. Man, Spinoza held, is a 
part of Nature, and Nature is governed by eternal and 
immutable laws. It must be just as possible, there- 
fore, to apply the mathematical method to man, as it 
is to apply it to matter. It must be possible to deter- 
mine, with the certitude obtainable in the exact sci- 
ences, what things are good for man and what means 
he has for attaining them. 

Spinoza’s belief in the self-sufficing, lawful order of 
Nature, and the adequacy of the natural powers of our 
mind to understand the mysteries (popularly so ap- 
praised) of heaven and earth, the singular expository 
style of the Etkics emphasizes in unmistakable fashion. 
Even for our understanding of God’s own nature, 
Divine Revelation, as commonly interpreted in Spi- 
noza’s day and our own, is wholly unnecessary. We 
need only the revelation afforded by the natural powers 
of reason operative in us. In geometry, we do not 
blindly accept conclusions on faith, nor do we reject 


them by authority. We are guided in our discovery. 


of the true and the false, solely by the light of our 
natural understanding. And the truths we discover 
are not temporary fabrications of the human mind, but 
eternal truths about the nature of things. Perhaps 
no other single aspect of Spinoza’s philosophy distin- 
guishes Spinoza from the medievalists as thoroughly 
as does his use of the geometrical order of exposition; 
and no other single aspect, perhaps, justifies as thor- 


INTRODUCTION Xxix 


oughly Spinoza’s claim to rank with the moderns if 
not even the contemporaries. 

The geometer’s method of starting with definitions 
and axioms and proceeding from proposition to propo- 
sition especially appealed to Spinoza, apart from the 
fact that geometry was an ideal science, because, for 
Spinoza, the essence of logical method consists in start- 
ing out with ideas that are of utter simplicity. Then, 
if the ideas are understood at all, they can only be 
clearly and distinctly understood. The absolutely 
simple we can either know or not know. We cannot be 
confused about it. And ideas which are clearly and 
distinctly understood are, according to Spinoza, neces- 
sarily true. Such unambiguously simple and therefore 
necessarily true ideas Spinoza believed his definitions 
and axioms expressed. Furthermore, if we gradually 
build up the body of our science by means of our in- 
itial simple ideas, justifying ourselves at every step 
by adequate proof, our final result will necessarily be 
as firmly established and as certainly true as the ele- 
mentary ideas we started with. ‘The reliability of this 
whole procedure more than compensates for its 
tediousness—a defect Spinoza expressly recognizes. 

Unfortunately, however, there are other defects in 
the geometrical method when it is applied to philos- 
ophy, far more serious than its tediousness,—defects, 
moreover, Spinoza apparently did not recognize. Even 
though the geometrical method is preéminently scien- 
tific, it is hardly a form suitable for philosophy. The 
Euclidean geometer can take it for granted that the 
reader understands what a line or plane, a solid or an 
angle is. For formality, a curt definition is sufficient. 


Xxx INTRODUCTION 


But the philosopher’s fundamental terms and ideas 
are precisely those in need of most careful and elab- 
orate elucidation—something which cannot be given in 
a formal definition or axiom. Also, in the geometrical 
form, the burden of the author’s attention is shifted 
from the clarification of the propositions to the ac- 
curate demonstration of them. Which, in a philoso- 
phical treatise, is most unfortunate. For though it 
is undoubtedly highly desirable that the philosopher 
should observe the same care and precision as the 
scientist, admitting nothing he cannot prove, it is 
nevertheless just as well for the philosopher to take 
reasonable care that what he is conscientiously prov- 
ing is understood. That Spinoza did not always take 
such care but considerably over-estimated the self- 
evidence of his definitions and axioms and the sim- 
plicity of many of his important propositions, is an un- 
happy fact conclusively established by the increasing 
volume of Spinozistic literature. 


II 


However, in spite of the difficult, and to the literary 
repellent form of the Ethics, the catholicity of 
Spinoza’s influence has been extremely remarkable. 
In time, his influence bids fair to equal in range, if 
not in gross extent, the as yet unparalleled influence of 
the artist-philosopher Plato. It took about a hundred 
years for Spinoza to come into something of his own. 
For the Ethics was condemned with the Tractatus 
Theologico-Politicus as an atheistic and immoral work. 
Only when the romantic philosophers of Germany, 


INTRODUCTION XXX] 


following the lead of Lessing and Jacobi, found in 
Spinoza a man who was, as they thought, after their 
own heart, did Spinoza’s mundane fortune change. 
As a result of their efforts, Spinoza ceased to be a 
philosopher to be execrated in public (though furtively 
read in private), and became a philosopher to be 
eulogized on all occasions in most rhapsodic, if bewild- 
ering, terms. Many others too, besides professional 
philosophers, began to read Spinoza with much sym- 
pathy and unbounded admiration. Goethe, Matthew 
Arnold, Heine, George Eliot, Flaubert, Coleridge, and 
Shelley—to mention only a few distinguished lay 
names—found in Spinoza a powerful, stimulating and, 
in varying degrees, congenial thinker. To-day, after 
having been one of the liberating thinkers of mankind 
who was read but not honored, Spinoza is fast becom- 
ing one of the canonized of mankind who are honored 
but not read. 

The reason for Spinoza’s magnificent influence is not 
difficult to discover: his philosophy deals in a grand, 
illuminating way with all that is of profoundest im- 
portance in human life. There is no material the uni- 
verse offers for man’s life but Spinoza seeks to under- 
stand and explain its rational function and _ utility. 
For Spinoza set before himself the hard task of laying 
down the principles whereby men may guide them- 
selves aright in all the affairs of life—the lowest as 
well as the highest. His philosophy, as a result, is at 
once the most exalted and the most matter of fact. 
There is no high sentiment or glorious ideal to which 
Spinoza does not give proper attention and a proper 
place. And yet he propounds nothing in his ethical 


XXXH INTRODUCTION 


theory that cannot be clearly seen by reason and that 
cannot be fully substantiated by the history of man. 
Spinoza’s ethics is perfectly balanced, eminently sane. 
And there is, pervading it all, a stately sustained reso- 
lution of mind, a royal, often religious spirit and calm. 

And Spinoza’s thought, if not all of his terminology, 
is refreshingly modern and contemporary. We find 
in him, as in contemporaries, an utter reliance upon 
the powers of the human mind. All dogmatism, in the 
pristine connotation of unexamined adherence to the 
doctrines of tradition, is absent from his thought. 
Spinoza is thoroughly critical, for only modern philo- 
sophic arrogance, in first full bloom in Kant, can justly 
monopolize the term “critical”? for itself. Naturally, 
though, Spinoza is unfamiliar with the whole apparatus 
and style of philosophic thinking which the last two 
centuries of excessively disputatious and remarkably 
inconclusive philosophy have created. Spinoza has 
his own technical philosophic style, inherited to some 
extent, but to a much larger extent transformed by him 
for original use. But technical as his style may be, it 
is simplicity itself when compared with the horrific 
styles which were, until the last few decades, alone 
thought adequate to express the profound and esoteric 
mysteries of modern philosophy. The philosophic 
jargon of the 18th. and roth. centuries is now almost 
universally discarded, and with it preternaturally re- 
condite and ineffectual modes of thought. Those who 
have achieved at least some of the new simplicity in 
thought and expression are better able than any others 
to enter into the heart of Spinoza’s philosophy, into 
the open secret of his thought. For apart from the 


INTRODUCTION XXXill 


mere stylistic difficulties of the Ethics and some detail 
of his metaphysical doctrine, the few great and simple 
ideas which dominate his philosophy are quite easy 
to understand—especially if one uses the Tyractatus 
Theologico-Politicus as an introduction to them. It 
was an unexpressed maxim with Spinoza that even at 
the risk of keeping our heads empty it is necessary we 
keep our minds simple and pure. 


III 


The central controlling idea of Spinoza’s philosophy 
is that all things are necessarily determined in Nature, 
which he conceives to be an absolutely infinite unified 
and uniform order. Instead of maintaining that God 
is like man magnified to infinity, who has absolute, 
irresponsible control of a universe which is external to 
him—the rather rude anthropomorphic account of the 
ultimate nature of the universe contained in the Bible— 
Spinoza maintains that God is identical with the uni- 
verse and must be and act according to eternal and 
necessary laws. God is Nature, if we understand by 
Nature not merely infinite matter and_ infinite 
thought,—the two attributes of Nature specifically 
known to us—but infinite other attributes the precise 
character of which we can never, because of our fini- 
tude, comprehend. Within this Being—God, Nature 
or Substance (the more technical, philosophic term )— 
there is no dichotomy; and there is outside of it no 
regulative or coercive intelligence such as the Bibli- 
cal God is conceived to be. Whatever is, is one. And 
it is, in the special Spinozistic sense, supremely per- 


XXXIV INTRODUCTION 


fect because absolutely real. There is, considered in 
its totality, no lack or defect in Nature. There can 
be, therefore, no cosmic purposes, for such purposes 
would imply that Nature is yet unfinished, or unper- 
fected, that is, not completely real. Something that 
cannot possibly be true of an absolutely infinite Being. 

Spinoza’s conception of an absolutely infinite uni- 
verse is a vast improvement upon the pent-in, finite 
medieval universe inherited from Aristotle. It exceeds 
by infinity, in breadth of vision, even our contempo- 
rary notion of an infinite physical cosmos. And his 
conception of universal necessity is as great an ad- 
vance upon the view that transformed natural occur- 
rences into miraculous events. Miracles, according to 
the Bible, most clearly exemplify God’s omnipotence; 
for omnipotence in the popular mind consists in noth- 
ing so much as in the ability to satisfy any purpose or 
whim no matter how transitory it is, or how incom- 
patible with what has been antecedently desired or 
done. Miracles may be extraordinary occurrences 
with reference to the order of Nature, but they are, 
with reference to God, commonplace exhibitions of 
His Almighty power. For Spinoza, however, miracles, 
did they actually occur, would exhibit not God’s power, 
but His impotence. The omnipotence of the one ab- 
solutely infinite Being is not shown by temperamental 
interruptions of the course of events; it is manifested 
in the immutable and necessary laws by which all 
things come to pass. 

Spinoza’s conception of the universe, flawlessly oper- 
ating under necessary laws, effectively disposes of 
miracles. And to dispose of miracles is one of 


INTRODUCTION XXXV 


Spinoza’s primary concerns. F'or as long as miracles 
happen, organized knowledge and rational control— 
the bases of a rational life—are both impossible for 
man. 

If events were not absolutely conditioned by the de- 
terminate nature of things, instead of science, we 
should have superstitution, and magic instead of scien- 
tific control. When a god governs the universe accord- 
ing to his transitory and altogether personal whims, 
or when chance, without a god, reigns, man is hope- 
lessly at the mercy of the flux of events. In the con- 
duct of his affairs memory is of no use to him, and 
forethought is impossible. In such cases man, as we 
read in his history, and could easily conclude from his 
nature, piteously grasps for salvation at whatever hap- 
pens his way, All things are then loaded with omin- 
ous powers the strength of which is directly proportion- 
ate to the hope or fear that enthralls him. If the 
universe were lawless, the irony of man’s fate would 
forever be what it was when he lived in abysmal igno- 
rance: when in bitterest need of sane guidance, he 
would be most prone to trust to the feeblest and most 
irrational of aids. On the other hand, if things are 
determined by necessity, nothing happening either 
miraculously or by chance, science and a commen- 
surate power of scientific control is possible for man. 
No more important argument could Spinoza conceive 
in favor of his doctrine. 


IV 


But the very doctrine which Spinoza placed at the 
heart of his philosophy because of the inestimable ad- 


XXXVI INTRODUCTION 


vantages man could derive from it, people loudly ob- 
jected to on the ground that it robbed man’s life of all 
moral and religious value. Determinism, they ex- 
claimed, reduces man to the rank of inanimate Na- 
ture; without “free-will” man is no better than a slave, 
his life doomed by an inexorable fate. True enough, 
nothing is more abhorrent or more deadly to the striv- 
ing soul of man than to be bound in a fatalistic doc- 
trine. But the anti-determinists wildly confuse a per- 
verted determinism of ends with a scientific determinism 
of means. And only the former determinism is truly 
fatalistic. This confusion is to be found equally cen- 
tral in Henry Oldenburg’s inconsequential letters to 
Spinoza and in Bernard Shaw’s shamelessly silly Pref- 
ace to Back to Methuselah. Fundamental confusions 
remain astonishingly stable throughout the centuries. 

Spinoza, when he maintained that all things are 
necessarily determined by the laws of their own being, 
certainly did not mean to say that, for example, the 
toothbrush I shall buy to-morrow will be determined 
by the stellar dust of eons ago. He did not wish to 
maintain that the infinite occurrences of the past were 
slowly but persistently moving to that far from divine 
or distant event. No aboriginal astronomer royal could 
have predicted the pending purchase merely by exhaus- 
tively analyzing the then stellar dust. For tooth- 
brushes and their purchase are determined by the 
nature of human beings, not by the nature of em- 
bryonic stars. And Spinoza’s doctrine of necessity 
maintains that all events are determined by their 
proper causes, not that everything is immediately 
caused by some antedeluvian event. And this is true 


INTRODUCTION XXXVI 


even though we can start from any event in the pres- 
ent, no matter how trivial, and go back to an event 
causally antecedent, and from that to another, even 
until we recede into the stellar dust itself. But this 
only amounts to saying, what is undoubtedly true, that 
neither I nor the toothbrush could now exist if the 
stellar dust, and the whole series of intervening events, 
had not existed. But this is totally different from say- 
ing that the stellar dust existed that I might exist to- 
day and buy a toothbrush to-morrow, or, what equals 
the same, that I and the toothbrush exist so that the 
stellar dust and the exceedingly long consequence of 
natural events should have a final purpose, an ultimate 
end—even if not an ideal fulfillment. Now only when 
causality, as in the latter case, is perversely teleological 
is determinism fatalistic. Fatalism is the result only 
when the ends of activity are necessarily but arbitrarily 
determined. But when causality is not arbitrarily 
teleological, or when only the natures of things, the 
instruments or means of activity are necessarily 
determined, then determinism involves no fatalism at 
all. 

The only truly fatalistic systems which have had an 
important influence in the history of mankind, have 
been certain religious systems—the Christian religion 
among them. The energies of western men were, for 
over fourteen centuries, robbed of all vitality and mean- 
ing because Christian theology irrevocably fixed the 
end of life, and man could do nothing to alter it signif- 
icantly in any respect. Arbitrary teleological deter- 
minism is, in the Christian religion, the philosophic root 
of other worldliness. And it was no alleviation of the 


XXXVIll INTRODUCTION 


state of affairs that miracles could happen in the realm 
of Nature, that is, that Nature was not determined, but 
was undetermined, accidental, or “free.” On the con- 
trary, it was a decided aggravation that there existed 
side by side with a perverse teleological determinism 
for the other world, an instrumental indeterminism for 
this world. For the latter served as effectively to put 
the means of man’s life, as the former did to put his 
end, out of his present reach and control. 

Contrast the modern and contemporary Christian 
period with the medieval and pre-medieval Christian 
period. What a vast difference there is! With the 
introduction of the modern period man’s energies were 
almost instantaneously liberated. And why? Because 
of Chancellor Bacon’s discovery of the value of em- 
pirical investigation? Hardly. For this discovery 
had been made long before Bacon. But it was only 
after Bacon that the discovery had a great effect be- 
cause an enormous intellectual transformation had al- 
ready partly taken place in the time between the first 
medieval discovery of the empirical method and 
Bacon’s proclamation of it. The enormous change was 
that determinism had been transferred from ends to 
means; and indeterminism from means to ends. 
Mathematical physics had, as a system for explaining 
Nature, supplanted theology. 

With scientific determinism firmly established in the 
realm of Nature and arbitrary determinism thoroughly 
disestablished in the realm of ends, the two-fold fatal- 
ity that crushed man with its oppressive power, auto- 
matically disappeared. On the one hand, the world 
ceased to be haunted by demonic powers; it was no 


INTRODUCTION XXXIX 


longer a miraculous world subject constantly to ca- 
pricious perturbations. It was no longer a world alien 
to man’s nature and it therefore ceased to be sheerly 
brutal to him. For the world is brutal only as long 
as we do not understand it. As soon as we do, it 
ceases to be brutal, and becomes quite human, if not 
humane. Knowledge transmutes a brute existent into a 
rational instrumentality. And, on the other hand, man 
could now espouse any end consonant with his nature. 
He was no longer bound and dwarfed by an alien, super- 
imposed end which is just as sheerly brutal to man’s 
soul as an alien world is sheerly brutal to man’s body. 

Of course, the ends that are consonant with man’s 
nature are determined by his nature, so that it may 
seem we have not really escaped the fatality of “deter- 
minism.” This is, however, only seemingly so. Be- 
cause, according to the teleological determinism of 
Christian theology the ends were fixed: independently 
of the natures that were to fulfill them; just as, ac- 
cording to instrumental indeterminism events were 
caused independently of the natures of the things that 
caused them. Otherwise there would be nothing 
miraculous about miracles and nothing virtuous about 
Calvinism. But if the ends are the ends of our natures, 
—that is, if teleological determinism is not perverse and 
arbitrary but rational and scientific—we are, as Spi- 
noza constantly points out, free. Only when we are 
subject to alien ends or the ends of alien natures are 
we enslaved. For freedom is not opposed to neces- 
sity or determinism; it is only opposed to an alien ne- 
cessity or alien determinism. Freedom consists not in 
absolute indetermination, but in absolute self-deter- 


xl INTRODUCTION 


mination. And self-determination is the very last thing 
that can be called fatalistic. 

Because Spinoza knew that freedom consists in self- 
determination he was saved from falling into the 
absurdities of Rousseau’s “Back to Nature’ doctrine 
even though Nature is, for Spinoza, the origin of every- 
thing and its laws, the only laws that are divine. Still, 
the purpose and conduct of man’s life, if they are to 
be rational, must be defined by man’s nature not by 
any other nature; if man is to be free, he must be 
guided by the particular laws of his own being, not 
by the laws of any other being least of all by the gen- 
eral laws of so totally dissimilar a being as absolutely 
infinite Nature. There is as much sense and rational- 
ity in exhorting us to go back to the Realm of Nature, 
as there is in exhorting us to go on to the City of 
God. 

There is, in Spinoza’s system, no teleological de- 
terminism (in the perverted theological usage explained 
above); but neither is there, in Spinoza’s system, any 
“free-will” for man. And the hue and cry that is 
always raised when “free-will” is denied, was raised 
against Spinoza. The clamorous moralists protest that 
“free-will” is the necessary (sic/) foundation of all 
morality, and hence of religion. This is the starting 
point of Bernard Shaw’s no less than of Henry Olden- 
burg’s infuriated argument. And, unfortunately, no 
less a thinker than William James starts from the same 
misguided assumption. And yet nothing can be more 
certainly clear than that if man as a matter of fact 
has no “‘free-will” it is the very height of absurdity to 
maintain that man’s morality necessarily depends upon 


INTRODUCTION xli 


his having “‘free-will.” Something man does not pos- 
sess cannot be made any condition, let alone the indis- 
pensable condition of his being able to live a moral life. 
Man’s morality must be based upon his nature; and 
what his nature is cannot be antecedently determined 
in accordance with the demands of any special moral 
theory. Moral theory must be based upon man’s na- 
ture; not man’s nature upon moral theory. 

Far from “‘free-will” being a necessary foundation 
wf morality ‘“free-will’ would make all morality, of 
the kind we know and the “free-will’-ists want. ab- 
solutely impossible. The central condition of moral 
life is responsibility. So central is it, that it is now 
acknowledged as such in all the penal codes of civilized 
countries. But if man has, instead of a determinate 
nature, “free-will, responsibility can in no way be 
fixed. Education, too, is necessarily impossible. Hence 
all punishment would have to be retributive. Moral 
strife, as well as legal penalties, would bear all the 
stigmata of unmitigated, imbecilic cruelty. This is 
not the case however if man has an absolutely deter- 
minate nature. Education is possible. And therefore 
although crime loses none of its evil character, punish- © 
ment can lose all of its inhuman sting. The necessary 
condition of human morality is responsibility not irre- 
sponsibility; reliability not unreliability; certainty not 
uncertainty; a firm will, not a “free” will. 

“Free-will” is necessary only in theological apolo- 
getics. According to Christian theology, if man did 
not have ‘“‘free-will” it would follow that God is the 
Author of all the evil of the world. Something which 
is not quite in keeping with His perfect goodness. By 


xlil INTRODUCTION 


a queer twist of mind, theologians therefore gave man, 
and not God (as they should have done) “free-will.” 
But they gave man “free-will” not to enable him to 
live virtuously, but to enable him to sin, If man were 
able to live virtuously as well as sinfully of his own 
“free-will” he would then be altogether independent 
of God, which can in no way be admitted or allowed. 
Hence the bitter and heart-rending cries of orthodox, 
especially evangelical ministers that if left to them- 
selves they can only sin! They can live virtuously 
only when they are absolutely coerced so to live by 
God! Their radical inability to understand or believe 
the self-reliant moral person grows from the very 
heart of their theology. For “free-will’—the only 
freedom they know—is the necessary condition, not 
of man’s morality, but of God’s! 

There is no fatalism in Spinoza’s system. Fatalism 
is the moral value of a theory of the universe. That 
theory is fatalistic, which makes the activities man 
cherishes either futile or impossible. Any system that 
puts man at the mercy of the flux of events does pre- 
cisely this. This is necessarily done by a system ac- 
cording to which the universe does not faithfully observe 
an immutable order, does not obey certain fixed and 
eternal laws. Nothing is as fatal as an accident; no 
universe as fatalistic as an accidental universe. 

There is no fatalism in Spinoza’s system because 
there are no accidents in Spinoza’s universe. All 
things are necessarily determined by immutable laws, 
and man, who is an integral part of the universe, is 
necessarily without “free-will.” In Spinoza’s system, 
ends, being undetermined (as contrasted with their 


INTRODUCTION xii 


being determined in the theological sense explained 
above) they can exercise no fatalistic power; and 
means, although determined (in the strict scientific 
sense) are similarly impotent because they are, in the 
life of man, subordinate to ends. Consequently, Spi- 
noza was able to write upon Human Freedom with a 
truth and clarity and force excelling by far all theo- 
logical, teleological, ‘“free-will,” idealistic philosophers 
from Plato to Josiah Royce. Spinoza was able to 
write thus because, not in spite of the fact that he 
placed at the heart of his philosophy the doctrine of 
necessity; because, not in spite of the fact that he 
developed the only complete system of philosophy 
strictly consistent with the principles of natural sci- 
ence or mathematical physics. Spinoza is, perhaps, 
the only thoroughly emancipated, the only thoroughly 
modern and scientific philosopher that ever lived. 
And he is, much more certainly, the only thoroughly 
emancipated, the only thoroughly modern and scien- 
tific ethicist that ever lived. 

To-day, in view of the extensive dominion and au- 
thority of science, the objections against Spinoza’s 
doctrine of necessity can hardly be as self-righteous 
and as loud as they were two centuries ago. The prin- 
ciple of the uniformity of Nature has become the 
established foundation of natural science. And it is 
also acknowledged, except in the recent ranks of su- 
perstition, that man is a part of Nature, not inde- 
pendent of it. 

Man’s connection with Nature is, in Spinoza’s sys- 
tem, at least as intimate as it is in the latest system 
of natural science. The original doctrine of the origin 


xliv INTRODUCTION 


of species, Spinoza would have found entirely in 
harmony with his general philosophy, although what 
he would have thought of subsequent evolutionary 
extravaganzas, it is impossible to say. Darwinian | 
biology made man consubstantial with the animal king- 
dom; Spinoza’s metaphysics makes man’s body con- 
substantial with the infinite attribute of extension or 
matter, and his mind consubstantial with the infinite 
attribute of thought which is the mind of Nature or 
God. Man, as a “mode” of extension and thought, 
is necessarily subject to the laws of these two attri- 
butes of which he is compounded. The fundamental 
relation of man to the universe, set forth in the Bible, 
is radically transformed. Man is no longer an only 
child of God, enjoying his privileges and protection 
(occasionally tempered by inexperienced punish- 
ments); he is a mode of two attributes of substance 
inexorably determined by their universal, immutable 
laws. 
V 


Of all the laws of the universe, it was Spinoza’s chief 
object to discover the mental laws. That there were 
such laws his metaphysics assured him; and the ex- 
istence to-day of a science of psychology substan- 
tiates his belief. The most popular of recent psycholo- 
gies—Freudianism—is based upon the principle that 
nothing whatever happens in the mental life of man, 
waking or asleep, that is not specifically determined 
by ascertainable causes. Psychoanalytic therapy 
would be impossible otherwise. Psychiatry, too, has 
conclusively demonstrated that only metaphorically 
is the subject matter it deals with in the region of 





INTRODUCTION xlv 


the “abnormal.” Actually, the insane are subject to 
laws of behavior which can be scientifically studied no 
less than the sane. They are no more possessed of an 
evil, designing spirit, as our witch-burning ancestors 
consistently believed, than the ordinary human being 
is possessed of ‘‘free-will.”’ 

Spinoza’s psychology is dialectical. But it is no in- 
dictment of his psychology to point out that it is. It 
is true, his formal definition of sorrow, for instance, 
fails supremely to touch the strings of a sympathetic 
heart. But the philosophical psychologist 1s not a 
novelist. The recent claim that “literary psychology” 
is the only valid psychology, is as well founded as the 
claim would be that only a “literary physics”’ is valid. 
Mathematical physics gives us no more a picture of the 
actual physical universe than Spinoza’s psychology 
gives us a picture of the mental and emotional life of an 
actual human being. But the failure of these sciences 
to give us a picture of the living world in no way in- 
validates their truth, or deprives them of their utility. 

Consider, as an example, Spinoza’s psychological law 
freely expressed in the dictum that Paul’s idea of Peter 
tells us more about Paul than about Peter. This con- 
clusion follows strictly from fundamental principles of 
Spinoza’s abstract, dialectical psychology; but its truth 
or its practical applicability is because of that not in 
the least impaired. Indeed, because of its dialectical 
form its range of meaning is greatly increased. 
Spinoza’s dictum applies to what William James called 
the ‘“‘psychologist’s fallacy.” It also applies to what 
John Ruskin called the “pathetic fallacy.’ Again, it 
applies to the fallacy Franz Boas exposed and which 


xlvi INTRODUCTION 


he may justly have called the “anthropologist’s 
fallacy.” And it applies also to what one may, with a 
great deal of benefit, dub the “ethicist’s fallacy.” For 
the very same constitutional weakness of man to iden- 
tify confusedly his own nature with that of the object 
he is contemplating or studying, is most flagrantly and 
painfully evident in the fields of theoretical and practi- 
cal ethics. The ‘‘ethicist’s fallacy” is the source of 
all absolutism in theory, and all intolerance in practice. 

All four fallacies just enumerated come under 
Spinoza’s dictum as special cases come under a general 
law. And these four are by no means the only in- 
stances of the common habit of mind. From no field 
of human endeavor is the mischief-working fallacy 
ever absent. We find it lodged in the judge’s decision, 
the propagandist’s program, the historian’s record, the 
philosopher’s system. In the field of metaphysical 
poetry it has recently been identified by Santayana as 
“normal madness.” In its milder forms, the fallacy 
is now known by every one as the “personal equation”’; 
in its pronounced, abnormal manifestations it is known 
by the psychoanalysts as “transference.” It is a Pro- 
tean fallacy woven into the emotional texture of the 
human mind. Nothing, for it, is sacred enough to be 
inviolate. For Spinoza discovered it sanctimoniously 
enshrined even in the Sacred Scriptures. As he bril- 
liantly shows us in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 
the prophets’ ideas about God tell us more about the 
prophets than about God. 

The far-reaching significance of Spinoza’s proposi- 
tions is one of their most remarkable characteristics. 


This is due to the fact, contemporary philological 





Sg ee eS ee ee 


SS le 


Re 


A wi 


INTRODUCTION xlvii 


philosophers notwithstanding, that Spinoza defined the 
essence, the generating principle, not the accidental 
qualities, of the human mind. 

Another example may not be out of place. Spi- 
noza’s proposition that anything may be. accidentally 
(in the philosophic sense of “accident”) a cause of 
pleasure, pain, or desire seems to explain the essence 
of all the particular variations of the psychological 
phenomena known now by all who have been aroused 
to the significance of their vagrant cryptic slumbers, 
as the phenomena of symbolism, sublimation, and 
fetich worship. Spinoza’s proposition explains all the 
phenomena adequately because among the funda- 
mental human emotions, Spinoza like Freud—if we 
discount the recent attempt to go beyond the pleasure- 
principle—reckons only three: desire, pleasure and 
pain. And with Spinoza, as with the Freudians, it 
sometimes seems that desire is more fundamental than 
the other two, for desire expresses, in Spinoza’s termi- 
nology, the essence of man. Desire however may be 
stimulated by almost anything. It requires the least 
sanity of mind, therefore, to prevent one from scandal- 
ously over-emphasizing one particular class of objects— 
of desire. | 

The striking similarity, if not identity, between Spi- 
noza’s psychological doctrines and those of contem- 
poraries, serves to give conclusive lie to the crass con- 
temporary contention that Truth instinctively shuns the 
philosophical study, and that she only favors the lab- 
oratory or clinic where she freely comes and frankly 
discloses herself to the cold, impersonal embrace of 
mechanical instruments. 


xiviii INTRODUCTION 


It is not altogether fortuitously that Spinoza’s psy- 
chology embraces so readily contemporary psychologi- 
cal conceptions. Spinoza made a psychological, if not 
psychoanalytical, analysis of some portions of Scrip- 
ture. And Scripture is a very rich human material. 
Besides having to explain the diverse and conflicting 
accounts the different Scriptural authors gave of the 
nature of God, Spinoza had to account for the super- 
stitious beliefs commonly held by men that are incor- 
porated in the Bible—the beliefs in omens, devils, 
angels. miracles, magical rites. Spinoza had to account 
for all these by means of his analysis of human nature 
since he would not grant the existence of supernatural 
beings and powers. Spinoza’s psychology adequately 
performs the task. His psychology demonstrates with 
unsurpassed thoroughness and clarity how human 
emotions, when uncontrolled in any way by intelli- 
gence, naturally attach themselves to all sorts of 
bizarrely irrelevant and absurd things, and stimulate 
the imagination to endow these things with all the 
qualities and powers the disturbed hearts of ignorant 
men desire. Ignorant and frustrated man, Spinoza 
showed, frantically dreams with his eyes open. 


VI 


Spinoza’s method in psychology is dialectical, but 
his interest is practical. His psychology one might al- 
most say is a moral psychology. Spinoza wants to 
explain mental phenomena through their primary causes 
because a knowledge of man’s nature is the radical 
cure for his ills. The greatest obstacle man has to 





INTRODUCTION xlix 


contend against is his emotional nature. Not that it 
is inherently degraded or sinful—the grotesque super- 
stition some religious moralists have maintained; but 
man’s emotional nature masters, more often than not, 
man’s rational nature, and leads man astray. When 
the emotions are unrestrained and undirected by knowl- 
edge and intelligence, they violently attach themselves 
to anything that chances to excite them. Their stark 
immediacy vitiates man’s judgment. He is unable, 
while under their sway, to select and follow the course 
that is best, because his mind is engulfed in the eva- 
nescent present. In his hectic desire to gain the pass- 
ing pleasure, man loses his ultimate good. 

But man’s salvation, just as much as his damnation, 
is within his own control. Salvation or blessed- 
ness is something man can achieve by his own efforts; 
it is not something he can achieve only by Divine 
Grace. For it is no innate perversion of soul, no in- 
herent wickedness of man, no malicious “free-will” 
that causes him to follow the lure of the Devil rather 
than the light of God. The very elements in man’s 
nature which cause him to fall are the means by which 
he can make himself rise. He can pit one emotion 
against another and the stronger will not merely win, 
but will win over, the weaker. And it is in the nature 
of the emotions not to have only one satisfying object, 
but to be able to derive satisfaction from almost any 
object whatsoever. The most spiritual forms of human 
love have the same emotional foundations as the most 
bestial forms of human lust. 

To learn how to become master of one’s emotions, to 
learn how to free oneself from their bondage, is, there- 


I INTRODUCTION 


fore, the primary condition of sustained and rational 
happiness. The key to virtue, Spinoza independently 
agreed with Socrates, is knowledge of oneself. Only 
when we understand oursleves can we control our emo- 
tions. And only when we have our emotions under 
control are we able consistently to direct our activity 
towards a definite, rational goal. Our activity then 
follows from our own nature, and not from the nature 
of external things which arouse our emotions and deter- 
mine their strength. And, as already noticed, to be 
the necessary cause of our own activity is, according 
to Spinoza, to be free. 

It is impossible, of course, for man ever to be the 
sole cause of his activity. To be such, he would have 
to be an entirely independent being—an absolute power 
-—something he can never be. No matter how elo- 
quently misguided enthusiasts extol the powerful merits 
of man’s “free-will” it will always be true that man’s 
emotions, sensations and ideas change very signifi- 
cantly with the organic changes that occur in his body. 
The emotions, sensations and ideas of a child differ 
from those of a man, and those of a man in maturity 
differ from those of a man decrepit with old age. And 
these and similar changes are quite beyond the control 
of man. 

However, without denying man’s intimate depen- 
dence upon Nature, it is still possible to distinguish 
between those activities which follow, in an important 
degree, from a man’s individual nature—whatever it 
may happen to be at the time—and those activities 
which follow only from his own nature in conjunction 
with the nature of other things. The movement of my 


INTRODUCTION li 


pen on paper would be impossible without the general 
order of Nature which allows such phenomena as 
motion, pen and paper, to exist. Nevertheless, I can 
profitably distinguish between the movement of my 
pen on paper and the movement of my body through 
stellar space. The former movement follows, in an 
important sense, from my own peculiar constitution; 
the latter, from the constitution of the stellar system. 
Likewise, but more significantly for human welfare, 
one can distinguish broadly between the activities and 
the passivities of the mind; between man as an agent, 
a doer—man’s intellect; and man as a patient, a suf- 
ferer—man’s passions. In this creative age such 
distinction should be singularly easy to draw. In moral 
terminology one can distinguish between man as free 
and man as enslaved. 

Since man can never be the sole cause of his ac- 
tivity, he can never be wholly free. The range of 
human power is extremely limited, and Spinoza is ever 
careful to point that out. Spinoza is no incurable 
optimist, no Leibnizian Pangloss who believes this is, 
for man, the best of all possible worlds. To be hu- 
manly idealistic it is by no means necessary to be 
super-humanly utopian. But neither is Spinoza a shal- 
low Schopenhauerian pessimist. Spinoza’s realistic ap- 
praisal of man’s worldly estate is entirely free from all 
romantic despair. This world is no more the worst 
than it is the best of all possible worlds for man. Al- 
though man cannot completely alter his evil estate, he 
can better it. And the wisdom of philosophy consists 
in recognizing this fact and discovering what ways and 
means there are for bringing such betterment about. 


lit INTRODUCTION 


This Spinoza has in mind throughout the devious 
courses of his philosophy. It is present to him when 
he delineates the character of Nature or God, when he 
outlines the nature of the mind and its emotions, no 
less than when he specifically addresses himself to the 
task of describing the way to the highest blessedness 
of man. Indeed, so intent is Spinoza upon reaching 
his ethical goal, and making all his doctrines contribu- 
tory to it, he purposely omits to treat of many 
philosophical problems because they are, though inter- 
esting in themselves, of too little value for the conduct 
of man’s life. His philosophical system, as a result, is 
in many respects merely sketched in massive outline. 


VII 

The dominant ethics of Christian civilization has 
made a special point of disregarding the intimate con- 
nection that exists between human nature and rational 
conduct. Morality has been identified, not with living 
a life according to a rational plan and an adequate 
conception of an ideal form of human existence, but 
with a strained attempt to live in accordance with an 
inherited system of coercive social habits. Of this 
morality, the Puritan is the popular type. Only in 
quite recent years has some advance been made back 
to the sane naturalistic conception of morals which is 
found in the Greeks and also in Spinoza. 

It is a fundamental point with Spinoza that the 
ceremonial law, as he puts it in the Tractatus 
Theologico-Politicus, can at best secure man wealth 
and social position. Man’s highest blessedness can be 
secured by the divine law of Nature alone. Here 


INTRODUCTION hii 


Spinoza and Rousseau are at one. It was relevant to 
Spinoza’s purpose to treat only of religious ceremonial 
law; but his conclusions apply with equal force and 
relevancy to social and political ceremonial law as well. 
Spinoza’s distinction between ceremonial and divine 
law is peculiarly significant and illuminating when 
applied to marriage. For to-day in marriage, if any- 
where, is it glaringly evident that the legal or religious 
or social ceremonial law can at best secure man or 
woman wealth and social position. Happiness or 
blessedness lie altogether beyond its powerful reach. 
Marriage is sanctified and made blessed not by the 
ceremonial law of priest or city clerk but by the divine 
law of love. Natural love, or love free from all cere- 
monial coercions, is not merely not a questionable 
source of marital happiness: it is the only source. The 
ceremonial law, the legal or religious marriage custom, 
has nothing whatsoever to do with human happiness. 
If by “free” love is meant love free from all legal, 
social and religious ceremonial restraints, then free love 
is, according to Spinoza, the only basis of rational 
marriage. 

No man ever treasured the joys of the spirit more 
than did Spinoza; but he did not because of that 
nourish a savage antagonism against the body. The 
very bases of his philosophy of the mind saved him 
from any such disastrous folly. What Havelock Ellis 
says ‘“We know at last” Spinoza knew all the time— 
“that it must be among our chief ethical rules to see 
that we build the lofty structure of human society on 
the sure and simple foundations of man’s organism.” 
It is because Spinoza knew this so thoroughly and 


liv INTRODUCTION 


remembered it so well that he devotes so much of his 
attention to the nature of the human mind and the 
human emotions in a treatise on ethics. 

Mind and body are not intrinsically alien or inimical 
to one another. They are codperative expressions of 
the one reality. The mind is the idea of the body and 
‘in proportion as one body is better adapted than an- 
other to do or suffer many things, in the same propor- 
tion will the mind, at the same time, be better adapted 
to perceive many things.” Purely psychologically, all 
that we can ever discover about the regulating influence 
glands have upon personality can only go to cor- 
roborate, not to improve this general position. And 
morally, the implications are equally far-reaching and 
profound. 

The virtue of the mind is not to despise or reject but 
to understand and transform. And it clearly must be 
more excellent for the mind to know both itself and 
the body than it is for the mind to know itself alone. 
For natural science is the result when the mind organ- 
izes into a system what are, in their own nature, simply 
apprehensions of bodily existences; and art is the result 
when the mind transfuses with an ideal quality of its 
own what are, in their own nature, simply apprehen- 
sions of bodily excellences of form or motion, color or 
sound. Matter is, in its nature, no more hostile to 
spirit than body is alien to mind. Paradise is not a 
non- or super-physical realm; it is a physical realm 
made harmonious with the ideality of the soul. Spirit 
is an appreciation, a transmutation of matter. For 
the lover, the physical embrace is a spiritual revela- 
tion. 


INTRODUCTION lv 


The fundamental metaphysical law from which 
Spinoza’s ethical system flows is that everything en- 
deavors to persist in its own being. This law is the 
metaphysical equivalent of the first law of motion in 
physics which is itself the equivalent of the law of 
identity in logic. By his law Spinoza does not mean 
anything which anticipates the nineteenth-century doc- 
trine of the competitive struggle for existence. On the 
contrary, nothing is so clear to Spinoza as the fact 
that the most efficient way of preserving one’s own 
being is not by competitive but by codperative activity. 
Ecpecially is this true of human beings. By his own 
efforts a solitary man cannot, even after he has been 
nursed to maturity, maintain himself in a decent man- 
ner. Certainly he is unable successfully to resist his 
foes. But with the aid of his fellows man can develop 
a highly complex and tolerably stable civilization, all 
the excellences of which he can enjoy at the compara- 
tively small risk of becoming a victim of its dangers. 
Social organization is the natural expression of man’s 
fundamental endeavor to preserve himself. A perfect 
social organization naturally expresses the highest form 
of human existence—individualism without anarchy 
and communism without oppression. 

Consistent with his primary law of being, Spinoza 
defines virtue not in terms of negations, inhibitions, 
deficiencies or restraints; virtue he defines in terms 
of positive human qualities compendiously called 
human power. Virtue is power, however, not in the 
sense of the Renaissance ideal of “manliness” as we 
glimpse it, for instance, in Benvenuto Cellini; nor is 
it power in the vulgar sense of dominion which seems 


lvi INTRODUCTION 


to be the confused ideal of some ultra-contemporaries; 
virtue is power in the sense of the Greek ideal that 
virtue is human excellence. It was therefore very 
natural for Nietzsche who consciously went back to 
the Greeks to hail Spinoza as his only philosophical 
forerunner, the only philosopher who dwelt with him 
‘yn the highest mountain-tops, perilous only for those 
who are born for the base valleys of life. And it was 
equally natural for Nietzsche to fail to see the impor- 
tant differences between his own violent and turbid 
thinking and the sure and disciplined thinking of Spi- 
noza—on those very points upon which Nietzsche 
thought they agreed. 

Perfection and imperfection are, in Spinoza’s 
thought, identical with the real and the unreal. The 
perfect is the completed, the perfected; the imperfect, 
the uncompleted, the unperfected. These terms have, 
in their first intention, no specifically ethical signifi- 
cance. Nature is perfect, that is, absolutely real or 
completed; but in no intelligible sense is Nature ethi- 
cally good. However, it is possible to convert non- 
ethical into ethical terms. We can do this by designat- 
ing, for example, a certain type of character as the 
“perfect” type. If we reach that type we are perfect 
or supremely “good”’; insofar as we fall short of it, we 
are Imperfect, or ‘“‘bad.” 

Just what constitutes human excellence is deter- 
mined in each case by the specific nature and relations 
of the individual involved. The excellence of a child 
is not that of a man; and the excellence of a free man 
differs from that of a slave. For the parent, the per- 
fect child is docile, beautiful and full of promise; for 


INTRODUCTION lvii 


the ruler, the perfect man is industrious, respectful of 
law and order, eager to pay taxes and go to war; for 
the free man, the perfect man is a rational being, living 
a harmonious life in knowledge and love of himself, his 
neighbor and God. Moreover, within any one class 
the excellences vary in harmony with the variations in 
the individuals. There is no excellence in general. 

But because ethical standards are quite human and. 
vary, they do not lack, therefore, all validity. They 
are within their range of applicability, absolute, even 
though they are, in a more comprehensive universe, 
relative. A just appreciation of the relative nature, but 
absolute value of specific ethical judgments, is above 
all things vitally necessary in ethics. Such apprecia- 
tion saves the ethicist from the pernicious fallacy of 
erecting personal preferences into universal laws; and 
it also saves him from falling into the ethical abyss 
where all things are of equal value because all things 
are equally vain. 

Ethical tolerance is different from ethical sentimen- 
tality. Every one has the sovereign natural right to 
cherish the excellence in harmony with his character. 
But the equality extends no further. A comprehensive 
estimate of the powers of the mind can be made and 
they can be arranged in a series of increasing value. 
No arrangement can ever be absolutely final and 
authoritative, for what one free man considers the 
highest perfection of human life, another will consider 
to be only of secondary importance. Still, all free 
men will agree that certain powers of the mind are 
superior to others. But superiority is not rationally 
endowed with legislative power over others. The free 


Ivili INTRODUCTION 


man is superior to the slave, but he has, because of 
that, no rational right to dominate him; neither is it his 
office to revile or despise him; the slave was given his 
nature, he did not ask for it. 

But if it is not the office of the free man to dominate 
or revile the slave still less is it the divinely appointed 
office of the slave to rule and revile the free man— 
universal democratic prejudices notwithstanding. And 
in support of the independent, and in case of contest, 
superior right of the free man we have the very highest 
authority for those who do not trust themselves to be 
guided by reason. God Himself has pronounced upon 
this tremendous issue. And not in mere words, but 
by unmistakable deeds. When Lucifer, the first abso- 
lute democrat or equalitarian, the first one to maintain 
that no one was better than he was, raised his impious 
standard, God assembled all His faithful hosts together 
and hurled Lucifer out of Heaven into Hell. And 
justly so. For Lucifer had, by his foul, sacrilegious 
doctrine and action, revealed himself to be the Prince 
of Darkness not the Prince of Light. To our untold 
and everlasting misery the Prince of Darkness who 
failed to ensnare the majority of angels did succeed in 
ensnaring the majority of mankind. So irredeemably 
so, even the sweetly and tenderly lyrical Prince of 
Peace had to be sent to us bearing a ghastly sword. 

Reason is not, according to Spinoza, a constitutive 
power in man’s life; it is a regulative principle. Spi- 
noza is, in the traditional usage of the term, anything 
but a rationalist in his ethics. Only if rationalism con- 
sists in being unflaggingly reasonable is Spinoza an 
avowed and thorough-going rationalist. Reason has, 


INTRODUCTION lix 


for Spinoza, no transcendental status or power, and it 
plays no dictatorial rdle. Reason, for him, is essen- 
tially an organizing not a legislative power in man’s 
life. To take a phrase from Professor Dewey, reason, 
for Spinoza, is reconstructive not constitutive. The 
power of the intellect is not some underived, original, 
independent power which can impose or, better, super- 
impose its categorical imperatives upon human conduct. 
The power of the intellect is wholly derivative, de- 
pendent upon the nature of the things that it under- 
stands. 

Reason gives man the power and insight to organ- 
ize his life on the basis of his knowledge, to chose 
an end harmonious with his nature, what is for his best 
advantage—the basis of all virtue—and to select and 
control the means by which it can be attained. For 
the happy goverance of our lives the object we must 
chiefly understand is ourselves. Because—in Matthew 
Arnold’s line—‘‘the aids to noble life are all within.” 
When we become creatures conscious of our natural 
endowment we cease to be blind instruments of our 
natures and become rational, intelligent agents. For 
intelligence, in the fundamental sense of the word, con- 
sists in knowing what we are and understanding what 
we can do. 

A man who governs his life according to the dictates 
of reason tries, insofar as possible, to harmonize his 
conflicting interests. He balances, impartially, future 
with present goods, and he bases his decision upon the 
broad foundation of all his needs. He does not madly 
satisfy or repress one passion at the expense of the rest 
of his nature. He satisfies a maximum rather than a 


2 


Ix INTRODUCTION 


minimum of his desires, evaluating them not merely 
by numerical strength but by quality and duration. It 
is only stupid and pernicious confusion that makes 
man’s moral problem consist in his discovering instead 
of a good “relative” to his nature, an “absolute” good, 
good for no nature at all. Man’s real moral problem 
is to secure a permanent good instead of a transitory 
good; a more inclusive good instead of a more restricted 
good; a higher good.instead of a lower good. Morally, 
it matters nothing whether an intellectual good is 
“absolute” or whether it is only “relative” to man’s 
mind and his power of comprehension. But it matters 
everything, morally, whether an intellectual good is 
more or less permanent, more or less inclusive, more or 
less valuable than a sensory good. This is the real 
moral problem man is faced with. And this is the 
moral problem Spinoza considers and solves. 

Everybody knows what is Spinoza’s solution. One 
permanent intellectual good is, according to him, of 
more importance and value in the life of man than 
countless transitory sensory pleasures. The object 
most permanent in character and greatest in value is 
Nature or God. The highest virtue of the mind, there- 
fore, the highest blessedness of man, consists in the 
intellectual love of Nature or God. Thus Spinoza 
passes from ethics to religion, which in his thought 
almost imperceptibly blend together. 


VIII 
The beginning and the end, as familiar wisdom has 
long since propounded, are the same. The ultimate 
origin of man is God, and the final end, the blessed 


INTRODUCTION Ixi 


crown of life, is to return to God in fullest knowledge 
and love. The philosopher who was during his life- 
time and for over a century after his death constantly 
execrated for being an atheist (he occasionally still is 
by some hardy fools) made God a more integral part 
of his system than did any one else in the whole history 
of philosophy. Spinoza did not do occasional reverence 
to God; he did not, in lightly passing, perfunctorily 
bow to Him; God is the veritable beginning and end 
of all his thought. 

The intellectual love of God does not demand as 
basis a knowledge of the cosmic concatenation of things. 
Omniscience alone could satisfy such a demand. The 
intellectual love of Nature or God depends solely upon 
a knowledge of the order of Nature, upon a knowledge 
of the infinite and eternal essence of God. And such 
knowledge is within the limits of our reach. 

We can apprehend the eternal essence of God be- 
cause the temporality of our thought is accidental to 
its meaning. It is the nature of reason to see things 
under the form of eternity. And we can apprehend 
the infinite essence of God or Nature because every 
particular finite thing is a determinate expression of 
the infinite. The law of causality requires that there 
be an essential identity of nature between cause and 
effect; otherwise it would follow that something can 
be produced from nothing. Since cause and effect 
belong to the same realm of existence, to the same 
attribute of Nature, whenever we apprehend the es- 
sence of a particular thing, we necessarily apprehend 
the infinite essence of that attribute of Nature. For 
the infinite, with Spinoza, is not so much an extent as 


Ixil INTRODUCTION 


a quality of being. Thus from the comprehension of 
any particular thing, we can pass to a comprehension 
of the infinite and eternal. 

This is most commonly understood, curiously 
enough, not in religion, but in art. The ecstatic power 
of beauty makes the soul lose all sense of time and 
location. And in the specific object the soul sees an 
infinite meaning. Indeed, one can almost say that the 
more specific or limited the artistic object, the more 
clearly is the absolute or infinite meaning portrayed 
and discerned. A sonnet is oftener than not more ex- 
pressive than a long poem; the Red Badge of Courage 
reveals more impressively than does the Dynasts the 
absolute essential horror of war. There are present, 
apparently, in the more pronounced mystical visions, 
characteristics similar to those of significant esthetic 
apprehensions. These visions are extremely rare and 
fleeting. But then we can be at the highest peaks only 
seldom and for a short while. But in a moment we 
see eternity, and in the finite, the infinite. It is for 
this reason Spinoza says the more we understand par- 
ticular things the more do we understand God. 

The great religious significance of Spinoza’s doctrine 
of the intellectual love of God is that it establishes 
religion upon knowledge and not upon ignorance, The 
virtue of the mind is clearly and distinctly to under- 
stand, not ignorantly to believe. There is no conflict 
between science and religion; religion is based upon 
science. ‘here is a conflict only between science and 
superstition. Mysteries, unknown and unknowable 
powers, miracles, magical rites and prayerful incanta- 
tions are instruments not of religion but of super- 


INTRODUCTION Ixili 


stition which has its origin in ignorant and ignominious 
fear. 

The free man does not fear and he is not con- 
sumed by fear’s boundless conceit. He has no appre- 
hensive conscience which unceasingly interprets all 
unusual or untoward events as being deliberate signs 
of a god’s impending wrath. The free man knows that 
man is, cosmically considered, impressively insignifi- 
cant. Human loves and hatreds, human joys and sor- 
rows are, in the face of the eternal and infinite, the 
littlest of little things. Human nature is only an in- 
finitely small part of absolutely infinite Nature; human 
life only a very tiny expression of infinite life. In- 
ordinate conceit alone could conceive Nature to have 
been made designedly either for our pleasure or our 
discomfort. The stars were not hung in the heavens 
so that we may steer our petty courses across the seas; 
nor were the sun and moon put in their places so that 
we may have the day in which to waste ourselves in 
futile labors and the night to spend in ignorant sleep. 
Even if there were a cosmic drama—which there is not 
—man is too trivial to play in it a leading role. The 
free man knows all this; but his heart is tempered 
and strong. He can contemplate his place in the uni 
verse without bitterness and without fear. For the 
free man’s love, as his worship, flows from his knowledge 


of God. 
IX 
Spinoza is unsparing in his criticisms of the super- 
stitions which are in, and which have grown up around, 
the Bible. All Spinoza’s major conclusions have heen 


lxiv INTRODUCTION 


embodied directly or indirectly in what is now known 
as “the higher criticism” of the Bible, which is the basis 
of the Modernist movement. It was Spinoza who 
established the fact that the Pentateuch is not, as it is 
reputed to be, the work of Moses. It was Spinoza, also, 
who first convincingly showed that other of the Scrip- 
tural documents were compiled by various unacknowl- 
edged scribes; not by the authors canonized by ortho- 
doxy, Jewish or Gentile. The wealth of philological 
and historical material at the disposal of the contem- 
porary Biblical investigator is incomparably richer than 
it was at Spinoza’s time. But modern scholarship has 
only added more material—only extended in breadth 
Spinoza’s modest researches. In depth, nothing new 
has been achieved. The principles of investigation and 
interpretation, and the general results Spinoza arrived 
at have not been improved upon in the least, nor is it 
at all likely that they ever will. Spinoza founded him- 
self upon bed-rock. 

Spinoza’s aim in revealing the defectiveness of the 
Bible was not theological but philosophical. Orthodox 
Biblical conceptions had in his day, as they still have 
to a certain extent in ours, a peculiarly sanctified 
power, because they were institutionalized and made 
the basis of an authoritative system of conduct. The 
misbegotten doctrines therefore could not be questioned 
with impunity, for a criticism of the doctrines on intel- 
lectual grounds was invariably construed as an attack 
upon the vested customs. The misfortunes of his- 
tory made dissent from palpable absurdities capital 
heresy. Social and religious bigotry burned scientific 
men with political ardor. 


INTRODUCTION Ixv 


However, although Spinoza suffered in his own per: 
son from religious persecution, he never for one moment 
held as did, for example, Voltaire, that the Church is 
the wily and unregenerate instrument of vicious priests. 
On the contrary, Spinoza was quite sure that many of 
the clergy were among the noblest of men, and that the 
Church was in large measure a very salutary institution 
for the masses who cannot learn to govern themselves 
by force of mind. But Spinoza was unalterably op- 
posed to any encroachment of Church authority upon 
the just liberties of men. Especially did he object to 
the Church extending its prohibitive power over men’s 
thinking. It is the business of the Church to inculcate 
“obedience” in the masses; not to dictate to philoso- 
phers what is the truth. The fundamental purpose of 
Spinoza’s attack upon the Bible is to free philosophy 
from theology; not to destroy the Church but to dis- 
establish it. 

Many readers of Spinoza conclude that because 
Spinoza tolerated Church authority in matters of public 
morality he therefore either did not in his own thought 
thoroughly adhere to his principles or else he was 
excessively cautious, even timid, and did not fully or 
consistently express his mind. No one would deny 
that there is some accommodation in Spinoza’s lan- 
guage. He certainly followed the practical wisdom of 
the thinkers of his day. Even so, however, Spinoza 
was by no means as cautious as was Descartes. Any- 
way, accommodation does not fully account for Spi- 
noza’s attitude on this question; in fact, it does not 
account for any significant feature of it. 

Spinoza never believed a sound metaphysics was, for 


xvi INTRODUCTION 


the masses, the indispensable basis of a good moral 
life. The multitude, he was firmly convinced, are con- 
trolled by their passions and desires, not by knowledge 
and reason. The coercive law of the State and Nature, 
not philosophy, keep them living within the bounds 
necessary for social order and human well-being. Far 
from it being necessary to tell the masses only the 
truth Spinoza believed, as did Plato before him, that it 
may even be necessary in order to rule the masses suc- 
cessfully in the ways of wisdom and virtue to deceive 
them to a greater or lesser extent. Such deception is, 
as a political expediency, morally justified, for the rulers 
would be lying in the interests of virtue and truth. 
Spinoza did not suffer from the fond contemporary 
delusion that the salvation of mankind will come about 
when philosophers become like all other people. He 
knew, as Plato did, that the day of ultimate, universal 
happiness will dawn rather when all other people be- 
come like philosophers. In the meantime, it is the 
height of moral and political folly to act as if that 
day had arrived or else could be ushered in by morn- 
ing. Spinoza had nothing but contempt for facile- 
tongued, feather-brained utopians. He loved humanity 
too sincerely to mislead humanity or himself that way. 
And so we find in Spinoza’s Ethics as in his Tractatus 
two systems of morals—one for the many who are 
called, and one for the few who are chosen. In the 
Tractatus, the religion of the many is summarily called 
“obedience”; in the Ethics it is more fully shown to 
consist of utilitarianism in the conduct of our affairs, 
high-mindedness towards our fellows, and piety to- 
wards Nature or God. To this is added, as the rare 


INTRODUCTION Ixvii 


religion of the few, what is designated in both treatises 
alike as the intellectual love of Nature or God. 


x 


Spinoza’s religion is as naturalistic as his ethics. By 
making God and Nature equivalent terms Spinoza was 
not merely resorting to equivocation to escape the 
penalty of his views. The identification of God and 
Nature fully embodies Spinoza’s doctrine that there is 
no supernatural realm; and therefore if man is to 
have a God at all, Nature must be that God. To con- 
tend, as so many do, that “true religion’ must be 
based upon the existence of a supernatural realm, no 
matter whether or not such a realm exists, is as absurd 
as to contend that “true morality” must be based upon 
man’s “free-will” no matter whether or not man has 
“free-will.”’ Spinoza’s system has been called pan- 
theistic. But it is pantheistic only in the sense that 
whatever man considers Godlike must be found in 
Nature, for no other realm exists, and there are no 
gods. 

But the question is always raised, how is it possible 
to love a Being indifferent to our human miseries and 
blind to our hopes? How is even an intellectual love 
of such a Being possible? Man, as his religions show, 
wants God to be a father, a protector, One who cher- 
ishes man’s desires and cares for his wants. The 
least anthropomorphic of religions wants God to be 
the depository of abstract human ideals. But Spinoza’s 
God is not even as human as this. Nature does not 
constitute the ideal type for man. 


{xviii INTRODUCTION 


Religion is, it is true, man’s search for comfort and 
security in an alien and hostile world. ‘The simple 
demand of the human heart is to be recognized and to 
be loved. Love is the magic touch that transforms all 
that is barren and cold into all that is rich and warm 
and fruitful. But man is neither loved nor recognized 
by the immensities of the universe. And in face of 
the illimitable stretches of time and space even the 
stoutest heart involuntarily quakes. We cannot con- 
sider the vast power of the universe without feeling 
crushed and becoming despondent. And ignorant man 
cannot see in the finite things about him the full expres- 
sion of the infinite beyond. He cannot derive any moral 
strength or comfort from the world about him be 
cause he conceives that world to be an implacable 
instrument of a god’s uncertain, inexplicable will. He 
therefore cosmically projects, in a frenzy of despair, 
his crying human demand. And out of the wastes of 
space there arises for him a personal God. 

Anthropomorphic religions reveal man at his weak- 
est, not at his best. Man’s true grandeur is shown 
when he transcends by his own power of mind his in- 
sistent human desires. He can then stand free before 
the Almighty. He may tremble, but he is not afraid. 
For his strength of soul is grounded not in the external 
world but in his own ideal. If we are born under a 
lucky star, and are fortunate and happy lovers of the 
ideal, the ecstasy of the mystic’s beatific vision is ours. 
But even if we are born under an unlucky star, and are 
misfortunate and unhappy lovers of the ideal, we still 
have the ideal to which we can hold fast and save our- 
selves from being shattered in our despairs, from dying 


INTRODUCTION Ixix 


in spirit, which is far more terrible than any death 
in the body could possibly be. We have the ideal to 
give us the strength, if we are lovers of God, to go to 
the cross with Jesus; or, if we are lovers of Virtue, 
to drink the hemlock with Socrates. 

The intellectual love of God is a devotion purged of 
all fear, of all vain regrets and even vainer hopes. The 
wild and angry emotions of sorrow and pain leave the 
strong and noble heart of man like the tidal waves 
leave the scattered rocks of the shore. As the rocks, 
when the waves return to their depths, smile securely 
in the glistening sun in the sky, so does the brave, 
free heart of man, when the passionate deluge is spent, 
smile serenely in the face of God. The free man 
is born neither to weep nor to laugh but to view with 
calm and steadfast mind the eternal nature of things. 

To know the eternal is the immortality we enjoy. 
But to know the eternal we must forget about ourselves. 
We must cease to be consumed by a cancerous anxiety 
to endure in time and be permanent in space. In the 
order of Nature our own particular lives are of no espe- 
cial importance. And unless we recognize this, we are 
necessarily doomed to a miserable fate. We must rec- 
ognize that our mere selves can never give us ultimate 
fulfillment or blessedness of soul. Only by losing our- 
selves in Nature or God can we escape the wretchedness 
of finitude and find the final completion and salvation 
of our lives. This, the free man understands. He 
knows how insignificant he is in the order of Nature. 
But he also knows that if only he can lose himself in 
Nature or God then, in his own insignificant particular- 
ity, the eternal and infinite order of Nature can be 


lxx INTRODUCTION 


displayed. For in the finite is the infinite expressed, 
and in the temporal, the eternal, 

It is this knowledge that makes man free, that breaks 
the finite fetters from his soul enabling him to embrace 
the infinite and to possess eternity. Once man is recon- 
ciled to the petty worth of his own person, he assumes 
some of the majestic worth of the universe. And the 
austere sublimity of soul that inscribes on the grave of 
the beloved God is Love, inscribes, when it is chastened 
and purified by understanding, on the grave of all that 
is merely human Nature is Great. Religion is the joy 
and peace and strength that is all understanding. 


JOSEPH RATNER. 


FIRST PART 


ON GOD 


The multitude, ever prone to superstition, and caring 
more for the shreds of antiquity than for eternal truths, 
pays homage to the Books of the Bible, rather than to 
the Word of God. 

SPINOZA. 





CHAPTER I 
OF SUPERSTITION * 


MEN would never be superstitious, if they could 
govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they 
were always favored by fortune: but being frequently 
driven into straits where rules are useless, and being 
often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear 
by the uncertainty of fortune’s greedily coveted favors, 
they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to 
credulity. The human mind is readily swayed this way 
or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and fear 
are struggling for the mastery, though usually it is 
boastful, over-confident, and vain. 

This as a general fact I suppose every one knows, 
though few, I believe, know their own nature; no one 
can have lived in the world without observing that 
most people, when in prosperity, are so over-brimming 
with wisdom (however inexperienced they may be), 
that they take every offer of advice as a personal insult, 
whereas in adversity they know not where to turn, but 
beg and pray for counsel from every passer-by. No 
plan is then too futile, too absurd, or too fatuous for 
their adoption; the most frivolous causes will raise 
them to hope, or plunge them into despair—if anything 
happens during their fright which reminds them of 


1 From the Preface to the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. 


4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


some past good or ill, they think it portends a happy 
or unhappy issue, and therefore (though it may have 
proved abortive a hundred times before) style it a 
lucky or unlucky omen. Anything which excites their 
astonishment they believe to be a portent signifying 
the anger of the gods or of the Supreme Being, and, 
mistaking superstition for religion, account it impious 
not to avert the evil with prayer and sacrifice. Signs 
and wonders of this sort they conjure up perpetually, 
till one might think Nature as mad as themselves, they 
interpret her so fantastically. 

Thus it is brought prominently before us, that super- 
stition’s chief victims are those persons who greedily 
covet temporal advantages; they it is, who (especially 
when they are in danger, and cannot help themselves) 
are wont with prayers and womanish tears to implore 
help from God: upbraiding reason as blind, because 
she cannot show a sure path to the shadows they pur- 
sue, and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but believing 
the phantoms of imagination, dreams, and other child- 
ish absurdities, to be the very oracles of Heaven. As 
though God has turned away from the wise, and written 
His decrees, not in the mind of man but in the entrails 
of beasts, or left them to be proclaimed by the inspira- 
tion and instinct of fools, madmen, and birds. Such is 
the unreason to which terror can drive mankind! 

Superstition, then, is engendered, preserved, and 
fostered by fear. If any one desire an example, let 
him take Alexander, who only began superstitiously 
to seek guidance from seers, when he first learned to 
fear fortune in the passes of Sysis (Curtius v. 4); 
whereas after he had conquered Darius he consulted 


OF SUPERSTITION 4 


prophets no more, till a second time frightened by 
reverses. When the Scythians were provoking a bat- 
tle, the Bactrians had deserted, and he himself was 
lying sick of his wounds, “he once more turned to 
superstition, the mockery of human wisdom, and bade 
Aristander, to whom he confided his credulity, inquire 
the issue of affairs with sacrificed victims.” Very 
numerous examples of a like nature might be cited, 
clearly showing the fact, that only while under the 
dominion of fear do men fall a prey to superstition; 
that all the portents ever invested with the reverence of 
misguided religion are mere phantoms of dejected and 
fearful minds; and lastly that prophets have most 
power among the people, and are most formidable to 
rulers, precisely at those times when the state is in 
most peril. I think this is sufficiently plain to all, 
and will therefore say no more on the subject. 

The origin of superstition above given affords us a 
clear reason for the fact, that it comes to all men 
naturally, though some refer its rise to a dim notion 
of God, universal to mankind, and also tends to show, 
that it is no less inconsistent and variable than other 
mental hallucinations and emotional impulses, and 
further that it can only be maintained by hope, hatred, 
anger, and deceit; since it springs, not from reason, 
but solely from the more powerful phases of emotion. 
Furthermore, we may readily understand how diffi- 
cult it is to maintain in the same course men prone 
to every form of credulity. For, as the mass of man- 
kind remains always at about the same pitch of misery, 
it never assents long to any one remedy, but is always 
best pleased by a novelty which has yet proved illusive. 


6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


This element of inconsistency has been the cause of 
many terrible wars and revolutions; for, as Curtius 
well says (lib. iv. chap. 10): “The mob has no ruler 
more potent than superstitition,”’ and is easily led, on 
the plea of religion, at one moment to adore its kings 
as gods, and anon to execrate and abjure them. as 
humanity’s common bane. Immense pains have there- 
fore been taken to counteract this evil by investing 
religion, whether true or false, with such pomp and 
ceremony, that it may rise superior to every shock, 
and be always observed with studious reverence by the 
whole people—a system which has been brought to 
great perfection by the Turks, for they consider even 
controversy impious, and so clog men’s minds with 
dogmatic formulas, that they leave no room for sound 
reason, not even enough to doubt with. 

But if, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and es- 
sential mystery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to 
mask the fear, which keeps them down, with the spe- 
cious garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely 
for slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but 
highest honor to risk their blood and their lives for the 
vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free state no more mis- 
chievous expedient could be planned or attempted. 
Wholly repugnant to the general freedom are such de- 
vices as enthralling men’s minds with prejudices, forc- 
ing their judgment, or employing any of the weapons 
of quasi-religious sedition; indeed, such seditions only 
spring up, when law enters the domain of speculative 
thought, and opinions are put on trial and condemned 
on the same footing as crimes, while those who defend 
and follow them are sacrificed, not to public safety, 


OF SUPERSTITION 7 


but to their opponents’ hatred and cruelty. If deeds 
only could be made the grounds of criminal charges, 
and words were always allowed to pass free, such sedi- 
tions would be divested of every semblance of justifi- 
cation, and would be separated from mere controversies 
by a hard and fast line. 

Now seeing that we have the rare happiness of liv- 
ing in a republic, where every one’s judgment is free 
and unshackled, where each may worship God as his 
conscience dictates, and where freedom is esteemed 
before all things dear and precious, I have believed 
that I should be undertaking no ungrateful or un- 
profitable task, in demonstrating that not only can 
such freedom be granted without prejudice to the 
public peace, but also, that without such freedom, piety 
cannot flourish nor the public peace be secure. . 

I have often wondered that persons who make a 
boast of professing the Christian religion, namely, love, 
joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men, should 
quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and display 
daily towards one another such bitter hatred, that this, 
rather than the virtues they claim, is the readiest 
criterion of their faith. Matters have long since come 
to such a pass that one can only pronounce a man 
Christian, Turk, Jew, or Heathen, by his general ap- 
pearance and attire, by his frequenting this or that 
place of worship, or employing the phraseology of a 
particular sect—as for manner of life, it is in all cases 
the same. Inquiry into the cause of this anomaly 
leads me unhesitatingly to ascribe it to the fact, that 
the ministries of the Church are regarded by the masses 
merely as dignities, her offices as posts of emolument— 


8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


in short, popular religion may be summed up as a 
respect for ecclesiastics. The spread of this miscon- 
ception inflamed every worthless fellow with an in- 
tense desire to enter holy orders, and thus the love 
of diffusing God’s religion degenerated into sordid 
avarice and ambition. Every church became a theater, 
where orators, instead of church teachers harangued, 
caring not to instruct the people, but striving to attract 
admiration, to bring opponents to public scorn, and 
to preach only novelties and paradoxes, such as would 
tickle the ears of their congregation. This state of 
things necessarily stirred up an amount of controversy, 
envy, and hatred, which no lapse of time could ap- 
pease; so that we can scarcely wonder that of the old 
religion nothing survives but its outward forms (even 
these, in the mouth of the multitude, seem rather adula- 
tion than adoration of the Deity), and that faith has 
become a mere compound of credulity and prejudices— 
aye, prejudices too, which degrade man from rational 
being to beast, which completely stifle the power of 
judgment between true and false, which seem, in fact, 
carefully fostered for the purpose of extinguishing the 
last spark of reason! Piety, great God! and religion 
are become a tissue of ridiculous mysteries; men, who 
flatly despise reason, who reject and turn away from 
understanding as naturally corrupt, these, I say, these 
of all men, are thought, Oh lie most horrible! to pos- 
sess light from on High. Verily, if they had but one 
spark of light from on High, they would not insolently 
rave, but would learn to worship God more wisely, and 
would be as marked among their fellows for mercy as 
they now are for malice; if they were concerned for 


OF SUPERSTITION 9 


their opponents’ souls, instead of for their own repu- 
tations, they would no longer fiercely persecute, but 
rather be filled with pity and compassion. 

Furthermore, if any Divine light were in them, it 
would appear from their doctrine. I grant that they 
are never tired of professing their wonder at the pro- 
found mysteries of Holy Writ; still I cannot discover 
that they teach anything but speculation of Platonists 
and Aristotelians, to which (in order to save their 
credit of Christianity) they have made Holy Writ con- 
form; not content to rave with the Greeks themselves, 
they want to make the prophets rave also; showing 
conclusively, that never even in sleep have they caught 
a glimpse of Scripture’s Divine nature. The very 
vehemence of their admiration for the mysteries plainly 
attests, that their belief in the Bible is a formal assent 
rather than a living faith: and the fact is made still 
more apparent by their laying down beforehand, as a 
foundation for the study and true interpretation of 
Scripture, the principle that it is in every passage true 
and divine. Such a doctrine should be reached only 
after strict scrutiny and thorough conprehension of the 
Sacred Books (which would teach it much better, for 
they stand in need of no human fictions), and not be 
set up on the threshold, as it were, of inquiry. 

As I pondered over the facts that the light of reason 
is not only despised, but by many even execrated as a 
source of impiety, that human commentaries are ac- 
cepted as divine records, and that credulity is ex- 
tolled as faith; as I marked the fierce controversies of 
philosophers raging in Church and State, the source 
of bitter hatred and dissension, the ready instruments 


10 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


of sedition and other ills innumerable, I determined to 
examine the Bible afresh in a careful, impartial, and 
unfettered spirit, making no assumptions concerning 
it, and attributing to it no doctrines, which I do not 
find clearly therein set down... . 


CHAPTER II 
OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE? 


WHEN people declare, as all are ready to do, that 
the Bible is the Word of God teaching men true blessed- 
ness and the way of salvation, they evidently do not 
mean what they say; for the masses take no pains at 
all to live according to Scripture, and we see most 
people endeavoring to hawk about their own com- 
mentaries as the word of God, and giving their best 
efforts, under the guise of religion, to compelling others 
to think as they do: we generally see, I say, theologians 
anxious to learn how to wring their inventions and say- 
ings out of the sacred text, and to fortify them with 
Divine authority. Such persons never display less 
scruple and more zeal than when they are interpreting 
Scripture or the mind of the Holy Ghost; if we ever 
see them perturbed, it is not that they fear to attribute 
some error to the Holy Spirit, and to stray from the 
right path, but that they are afraid to be convicted 
of error by others, and thus to overthrow and bring 
into contempt their own authority. But if men really 
believe what they verbally testify of Scripture, they 
would adopt quite a different plan of life: their minds 
would not be agitated by so many contentions, nor so 
many hatreds, and they would cease to be excited by 


1 From the 7r. Th.-P., ch. vii, same title. 
11 


ibe THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


such a blind and rash passion for interpreting the 
sacred writings, and excogitating novelties in religion. 
On the contrary, they would not dare to adopt, as the 
teaching of Scripture, anything which they could not 
plainly deduce therefrom: lastly, these sacrilegious 
persons who have dared, in several passages, to inter- 
polate the Bible, would have shrunk from so great a 
crime, and would have stayed their sacrilegious hands. 

Ambition and unscrupulousness have waxed so pow- 
erful, that religion is*thought to consist, not so much 
in respecting the writings of the Holy Ghost, as in de- 
fending human commentaries, so that religion is no 
longer identified with charity, but with spreading dis- 
cord and propagating insensate hatred disguised under 
the name of zeal for the Lord, and eager ardor. 

To these evils we must add superstition, which 
teaches men to despise reason and Nature, and only to 
admire and venerate that which is repugnant to both: 
whence it is not wonderful that for the sake of increas- 
ing the admiration and veneration felt for Scripture, 
men strive to explain it so as to make it appear to con- 
tradict, as far as possible, both one and the other: 
thus they dream that most profound mysteries lie 
hid in the Bible, and weary themselves out in the in- 
vestigation of these absurdities, to the neglect of what 
is useful. Every result of their diseased imagination 
they attribute to the Holy Ghost, and strive to defend 
with the utmost zeal and passion; for it is an observed 
fact that men employ their reason to defend conclu- 
sions arrived at by reason, but conclusions arrived at 
by the passions are defended by the passions. 

If we would separate ourselves from the crowd and 


OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 13 


escape from theological prejudices, instead of rashly 
accepting human commentaries for Divine documents, 
we must consider the true method of interpreting Scrip- 
ture and dwell upon it at some length: for if we re- 
main in ignorance of this we cannot know, certainly, 
what the Bible and the Holy Spirit wish to teach. 

I may sum up the matter by saying that the method 
of interpreting Scripture does not widely differ from 
the method of interpreting Nature—in fact, it is almost 
the same. For as the interpretation of Nature consists 
in the examination of the history of Nature, and there- 
from deducing definitions of natural phenomena on 
certain fixed axioms, so Scriptural interpretation pro- 
ceeds by the examination of Scripture, and inferring 
the intention of its authors as a legitimate conclusion 
from its fundamental principles. By working in this 
manner every one will always advance without danger 
of error—that is, if they admit no principles for in- 
terpreting Scripture, and discussing its contents save 
such as they find in Scripture itselfi—and will be able 
with equal security to discuss what surpasses our un- 
derstanding, and what is known by the natural light 
of reason. 

In order to make clear that such a method is 
not only correct, but is also the only one advisable, 
and that it agrees with that employed in interpreting 
Nature, I must remark that Scripture very often treats 
of matters which cannot be deduced from principles 
known to reason: for it is chiefly made up of narratives 
and revelation: the narratives generally contain mir- 
acles—that is, [as we shall show in a later chapter], 
relations of extraordinary natural occurrences adapted 


14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


to the opinions and judgment of the historians who 
recorded them: the revelations also were adapted to 
the opinions of the prophets and in themselves sur- 
passed human comprehension. Therefore the knowl- 
edge of all these—that is, of nearly the whole contents 
of Scripture, must be sought from Scripture alone, 
even as the knowledge of nature is sought from nature. 
As for the moral doctrines which are also contained in 
the Bible, they may be demonstrated from received 
axioms, but we cannot prove in the same manner that 
Scripture intended to teach them, this can only be 
learned from Scripture itself. 

If we would bear unprejudiced witness to the 
Divine origin of Scripture, we must prove solely on 
its own authority that it teaches true moral doctrines, 
for by such means alone can its Divine origin be 
demonstrated: we have shown that the certitude of the 
prophets depended chiefly on their having minds 
turned towards what is just and good, therefore we 
ought to have proof of their possessing this quality 
before we repose faith in them. From miracles God’s 
divinity cannot be proved [as I shall show], for 
miracles could be wrought by false prophets. Where- 
fore the Divine origin of Scripture must consist solely 
in its teaching true virtue. But we must come to our 
conclusion simply on Scriptural grounds, for if we 
were unable to do so we could not, unless strongly 
prejudiced, accept the Bible and bear witness to its 
Divine origin. 

Our knowledge of Scripture must then be looked for 
in Scripture only. . 

Lastly, Scripture does not give us definitions of 


OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 15 


things any more than nature does: therefore, such 
definitions must be sought in the latter case from the 
diverse workings of nature; in the former case, from 
the various narratives about the given subject which 
occur in the Bible. 

The universal rule, then, in interpreting Scripture 
is to accept nothing as an authoritative Scriptural 
statement which we do not perceive very clearly when 
we examine it in the light of its history. What I mean 
by its history, and what should be the chief points 
elucidated, I will now explain. 

The history of a Scriptural statement comprises— 

I. The nature and properties of the language in 
which the books of the Bible were written, and in which 
their authors were accustomed to speak. We shall 
thus be able to investigate every expression by com- 
parison with common conversational usages. 

Now all the writers both of the Old Testament and 
the New were Hebrews: therefore, a knowledge of the 
Hebrew language is before all things necessary, not 
only for the comprehension of the Old Testament, 
which was written in that tongue, but also of the New: 
for although the latter was published in other lan~ 
guages, yet its characteristics are Hebrew. 

II. An analysis of each book and arrangement of 
its contents under heads; so that we may have at hand 
the various texts which treat of a given subject. 
Lastly, a note of all the passages which are ambiguous 
or obscure, or which seem mutually contradictory. 

I call passages clear or obscure according as their 
meaning is inferred easily or with difficulty in relation 
to the context, not according as their truth is perceived 


16 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


easily or the reverse by reason. We are at work not 
on the truth of passages, but solely on their meaning. 
We must take especial care, when we are in search of 
the meaning of a text, not to be led away by our reason 
in so far as it is founded on principles of natural 
knowledge (to say nothing of prejudices): in order 
not to confound the meaning of a passage with its 
truth, we must examine it solely by means of the sig- 
nification of the words, or by a reason acknowledging 
no foundation but Scripture. 

I will illustrate my meaning by an example. The 
words of Moses, “‘God is a fire” and “God is jealous,” 
are perfectly clear so long as we regard merely the 
signification of the words, and I therefore reckon 
them among the clear passages, though in relation to 
reason and truth they are most obscure: still, although 
the literal meaning is repugnant to the natural light of 
reason, nevertheless, if it cannot be clearly overruled 
on grounds and principles derived from its Scriptural 
“history,” it, that is, the literal meaning, must be the 
one retained: and contrariwise if these passages liter- 
ally interpreted are found to clash with principles 
derived from Scripture, though such literal interpre- 
tation were in absolute harmony with reason, they 
must be interpreted in a different manner, 7.e., meta- 
phorically. 

If we would know whether Moses believed God to 
be a fire or not, we must on no account decide the 
question on grounds of the reasonableness or the re- 
verse of such an opinion, but must judge solely by the 
other opinions of Moses which are on record. 

In the present instance, as Moses says in several 


OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 17 


other passages that God has no likeness to any visible 
thing, whether in heaven or in earth, or in the water, 
either all such passages must be taken metaphorically, 
or else the one before us must be so explained. How- 
ever, as we should depart as little as possible from the 
literal sense, we must first ask whether this text, God 
is a fire, admits of any but the literal meaning—that 
is, whether the word fire ever means anything besides 
ordinary natural fire. If no such second meaning can 
be found, the text must be taken literally, however 
repugnant to reason it may be: and all the other 
passages, though in complete accordance with reason, 
must be brought into harmony with it. If the verbal 
expressions would not admit of being thus harmonized, 
we should have to set them down as irreconcilable, 
and suspend our judgment concerning them. However, 
as we find the name fire applied to anger and jealousy 
(see Job xxxi. 12) we can thus easily reconcile the 
words of Moses, and legitimately conclude that the 
two propositions God is a fire, and God is jealous, 
are in meaning identical. 

Further, as Moses clearly teaches that God is 
jealous, and nowhere states that God is without pas- 
sions or emotions, we must evidently infer that Moses 
held this doctrine himself, or at any rate, that he 
wished to teach it, nor must we refrain because such 
a belief seems contrary to reason: for as we have 
shown, we cannot wrest the meaning of texts to suit 
the dictates of our reason, or our preconceived opin- 
ions. The whole knowledge of the Bible must be 
sought solely from itself. 

III. Lastly, such a history should relate the en- 


18 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


vironment of all the prophetic books extant; that is, 
the life, the conduct, and the studies of the author of 
each book, who he was, what was the occasion, and 
the epoch of his writing, whom did he write for, and 
in what language. Further, it should inquire into the 
fate of each book: how it was first received, into 
whose hands it fell, how many different versions there 
were of it, by whose advice was it received into the 
Bible, and, lastly, how all the books now universally 
accepted as sacred, were united into a single whole. 

All such information should, as I have said, be con- 
tained in the “‘history” of Scripture. For, in order to 
know what statements are set forth as laws, and what 
aS moral precepts, it is important to be acquainted 
with the life, the conduct, and the pursuits of their 
author: moreover, it becomes easier to explain a man’s 
writings in proportion as we have more intimate 
knowledge of his genius and temperament. 

Further, that we may not confound precepts which 
are eternal with those which served only a temporary 
purpose, or were only meant for a few, we should know 
what was the occasion, the time, the age, in which 
each book was written, and to what nation it was ad- 
dressed. 

Lastly, we should have knowledge on the other 
points I have mentioned, in order to be sure, in addi- 
tion to the authenticity of the work, that it has not 
been tampered with by sacrilegious hands, or whether 
errors can have crept in, and, if so, whether they have 
been corrected by men sufficiently skilled and worthy 
of credence. All these things should be known, that 
we may not be led away by blind impulse to accept 


OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 19 


whatever is thrust on our notice, instead of only that 
which is sure and indisputable. 

Now, when we are in possession of this history of 
Scripture, and have finally decided that we assert 
nothing as prophetic doctrine which does not directly 
follow from such history, or which is not clearly de- 
ducible from it, then, I say, it will be time to gird 
ourselves for the task of investigating the mind of the 
prophets and of the Holy Spirit. But in this further 
arguing, also, we shall require a method very like that 
employed in interpreting Nature from her history. As 
in the examination of natural phenomena we try first 
to investigate what is most universal and common to 
all Nature—such, for instance, as motion and rest, and 
their laws and rules, which Nature always observes, 
and through which she continually works—and then 
we proceed to what is less universal; so, too, in the 
history of Scripture, we seek first for that which is 
most universal, and serves for the basis and foundation 
of all Scripture, a doctrine, in fact, that is commended 
by all the prophets as eternal and most profitable to 
all men. For example, that God is one, and that He is 
omnipotent, and He alone should be worshiped, that 
He has a care for all men, and that He especially loves 
those who adore Him and love their neighbor as them- 
selves, etc. These and similar doctrines, I repeat, 
Scripture everywhere so clearly and expressly teaches, 
that no one was ever in doubt of its meaning con- 
cerning them. 

The nature of God, His manner of regarding and 
providing for things, and similar doctrines, Scripture 
nowhere teaches professedly, and as eternal doctrine; 


20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


on the contrary, we have shown that the prophets 
themselves did not agree on the subject; therefore, 
we must not lay down any doctrine as Scriptural on 
such subjects, though it may appear perfectly clear on 
rational grounds. 

From a proper knowledge of this universal doctrine 
of Scripture, we must then proceed to other doctrines 
less universal, but which, nevertheless, have regard to 
the general conduct of life, and flow from the uni- 
versal doctrine like rivulets from a source: such are 
all particular external manifestations of true virtue, 
which need a given occasion for their exercise; what- 
ever is obscure or ambiguous on such points in Scrip- 
ture must be explained and defined by its universal 
doctrine; with regard to contradictory instances, we 
must observe the occasion and the time in which they 
were written. For instance, when Christ says, 
“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be com- 
forted,” we do not know, from the actual passage, 
what sort of mourners are meant; as, however, Christ 
afterwards teaches that we should have care for noth- 
ing, save only for the kingdom of God and His 
righteousness, which is commended as the highest good 
(see Matt. vi. 33), it follows that by mourners He only 
meant those who mourn for the kingdom of God and 
righteousness neglected by man: for this would be 
the only cause of mourning to those who love nothing 
but the Divine kingdom and justice, and who evi- 
dently despise the gifts of fortune. So, too, when 
Christ says: “But if a man strike you on the right 
cheek, turn to him the left also,’ and the words which 
follow. 


OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 21 


If He had given such a command, as a lawgiver, to 
judges, He would thereby have abrogated the law of 
Moses, but this He expressly says He did not do (Matt. 
v. 17). Wherefore we must consider who was the 
speaker, what was the occasion, and to whom were 
the words addressed. Now Christ said that He did 
not ordain laws as a legislator, but inculcated precepts 
as a teacher: inasmuch as He did not aim at correct- 
ing cutward actions so much as the frame of mind. 
Further, these words were spoken to men who were 
oppressed, who lived in a corrupt commonwealth on 
the brink of ruin, where justice was utterly neglected. 
The very doctrine inculcated here by Christ just be- 
fore the destruction of the city was also taught by 
Jeremiah before the first destruction of Jerusalem, 
that is, in similar circumstances, as we see from 
Lamentations ill. 25-30. 

Now as such teaching was only set forth by the 
prophets in times of oppression, and was even then 
never laid down as a law; and as, on the other hand, 
Moses (who did not write in times of oppression, but 
—mark this—strove to found a well-ordered common- 
wealth), while condemning envy and hatred of one’s 
neighbor, yet ordained that an eye should be given for 
an eye, it follows most clearly from these purely Script- 
ural grounds that this precept of Christ and Jeremiah 
concerning submission to injuries was only valid in 
places where justice is neglected, and in a time of op- 
pression, but does not hold good in a well-ordered 
state. 

In a well-ordered state where justice is administered 
every one is bound, if he would be accounted just, to 


22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


demand penalties before the judge (see Lev. v. 1), not 
for the sake of vengeance (Lev. xix. 17, 18), but in 
order to defend justice and his country’s laws, and to 
prevent the wicked rejoicing in their wickedness. All 
this is plainly in accordance with reason. I might cite 
many other examples in the same manner, but I think 
the foregoing are sufficient to explain my meaning and 
the utility of this method, and this is all my present 
purpose. Hitherto we have only shown how to in- 
vestigate those passages of Scripture which treat of 
practical conduct, and which, therefore, are more 
easily examined, for on such subjects there was never 
really any controversy among the writers of the Bible. 

The purely speculative passages cannot be so easily 
traced to their real meaning: the way becomes nar- 
rower, for as the prophets differed in matters specula- 
tive among themselves, and the narratives are in great 
measure adapted to the prejudices of each age, we 
must not, on any account, infer the intention of one 
prophet from clearer passages in the writings of an- 
other; nor must we so explain his meaning, unless it is 
perfectly plain that the two prophets were at one in 
the matter. 

How we are to arrive at the intention of the proph- 
ets in such cases I will briefly explain. Here, too, 
we must begin from the most universal proposition, 
inquiring first from the most clear Scriptural state- 
ments what is the nature of prophecy or revelation, 
and wherein does it consist; then we must proceed to 
miracles, and so on to whatever is most general till we 
come to the opinions of a particular prophet, and, at 
last, to the meaning of a particular revelation, proph- 


OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 23 


ecy, history, or miracle. We have already pointed 
out that great caution is necessary not to confound 
the mind of a prophet or historian with the mind of 
the Holy Spirit and the truth of the matter; therefore 
I need not dwell further on the subject. I would, 
however, here remark concerning the meaning of 
revelation, that the present method only teaches us 
what the prophets really saw or heard, not what they 
desired to signify or represent by symbols. The latter 
may be guessed at but cannot be inferred with cer- 
tainty from Scriptural premises. 

We have thus shown the plan for interpreting Scrip- 
ture, and have, at the same time, demonstrated that it 
is the one and surest way of investigating its true 
meaning. I am willing indeed to admit that those 
persons (if any such there be) would be more abso- 
lutely certainly right, who have received either a trust- 
worthy tradition or an assurance from the prophets 
themselves, such as is claimed by the Pharisees; or 
who have a pontiff gifted with infallibility in the inter- 
pretation of Scripture, such as the Roman Catholics 
boast. But as we can never be perfectly sure, either 
of such a tradition or of the authority of the pontiff, 
we cannot found any certain conclusion on either: the 
one is denied by the oldest sect of Christians, the other 
by the oldest sect of Jews. Indeed, if we consider the 
series of years (to mention no other point) accepted 
by the Pharisees from their Rabbis, during which time 
they say they have handed down the tradition from 
Moses, we shall find that it is not correct, as I show 
elsewhere. Therefore such a tradition should be re- 
ceived with extreme suspicion; and although, accord- 


24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


ing to our method, we are bound to consider as un- 
corrupted the tradition of the Jews, namely, the 
meaning of the Hebrew words which we received from 
them, we may accept the latter while retaining our 
doubts about the former. 

No one has ever been able to change the meaning of 
a word in ordinary use, though many have changed the 
meaning of a particular sentence. Such a proceeding 
would be most difficult; for whoever attempted to 
change the meaning of a word, would be compelled, 
at the same time, to explain all the authors who 
employed it, each according to his temperament and 
intention, or else, with consummate cunning, to falsify 
them. 

Further, the masses and the learned alike preserve 
language, but it is only the learned who preserve the 
meaning of particular sentences and books: thus, we 
may easily imagine that the learned having a very rare 
book in their power, might change or corrupt the mean- 
ing of a sentence in it, but they could not alter the 
signification of the words; moreover, if anyone wanted 
to change the meaning of a common word he would not 
be able to keep up the change among posterity, or in 
common parlance or writing. 

For these and such-like reasons we may readily con- 
clude that it would never enter into the mind of any- 
one to corrupt a language, though the intention of a 
writer may often have been falsified by changing his 
phrases or interpreting them amiss. As then our 
method (based on the principle that the knowledge 
of Scripture must be sought from itself alone) is the 
sole true one, we must evidently renounce any knowl- 


OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 25 


edge which it cannot furnish for the complete under- 
standing of Scripture. ... 

If we read a book which contains incredible or im- 
possible narratives, or is written in a very obscure 
style, and if we know nothing of its author, nor of the 
time or occasion of its being written, we shall vainly 
endeavor to gain any certain knowledge of its true 
meaning. For being in ignorance on these points we 
cannot possibly know the aim or intended aim of the 
author; if we are fully informed, we so order our 
thoughts as not to be in any way prejudiced either in 
ascribing to the author or him for whom the author 
wrote either more or less than his meaning, and we 
only take into consideration what the author may have 
had in his mind, or what the time and occasion de- 
manded. I think this must be tolerably evident to all. 

It often happens that in different books we read his- 
tories in themselves similar, but which we judge very 
differently, according to the opinions we have formed 
of the authors. I remember once to have read in some 
book that a man named Orlando Furioso used to drive 
a kind of winged monster through the air, fly over any 
countries he liked, kill unaided vast numbers of men 
and giants, and such like fancies, which from the point 
of view of reason are obviously absurd. A very simi- 
lar story I read in Ovid of Perseus, and also in the 
books of Judges and Kings of Samson, who alone and 
unarmed killed thousands of men, and of Elijah, who 
flew through the air, and at last went up to heaven 
in a chariot of fire, with horses of fire. All these 
stories are obviously alike, but we judge them very 
differently. The first only sought to amuse, the second: 


26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


had a political object, the third a religious object. We 
gather this simply from the opinions we had previously 
formed of the authors. Thus it is evidently necessary 
to know something of the authors of writings which are 
obscure or unintelligible, if we would interpret their 
meaning; and for the same reason, in order to chose 
the proper reading from among a great variety, we 
ought to have information as to the versions in which 
the differences are found, and as to the possibility of 
other readings having been discovered by persons of 
greater authority. ... 

. . The difficulties in this method of interpreting 
Scripture from its own history, I conceive to be so 
great that I do not hesitate to say that the true mean- 
ing of Scripture is in many places inexplicable, or at 
best mere subject for guess work; but I must again 
point out, on the other hand, that such difficulties only 
arise when we endeavor to follow the meaning of a 
prophet in matters which cannot be perceived, but 
only imagined, not in things, whereof the understand- 
ing can give a clear and distinct idea, and which are 
conceivable through themselves: matters which by 
their nature are easily perceived cannot be expressed 
so obscurely as to be unintelligible; as the proverb 
says, “a word is enough to the wise.’ Euclid, who 
only wrote of matters very simple and easily under- 
stood, can easily be comprehended by any one in any 
language; we can follow his intention perfectly, and be 
certain of his true meaning, without having a thorough 
knowledge of the language in which he wrote; in fact, 
a quite rudimentary acquaintance is sufficient. We 
need make no researches concerning the life, the pur- 


OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 27 


suits, or the habits of the author; nor need we inquire 
in what language, nor when he wrote, nor the vicissi- 
tudes of his book, nor its various readings, nor how, 
nor by whose advice it has been received. 

What we here say of Euclid might equally be said of 
any book which treats of things by their nature per- 
ceptible: thus we conclude that we can easily follow 
the intention of Scripture in moral questions, from the 
history we possess of it, and we can be sure of its true 
meaning. 

The precepts of true piety are expressed in very 
ordinary language, and are equally simple and easily 
understood. Further, as true salvation and blessedness 
consist in a true assent of the soul—and we truly assent 
only to what we clearly understand—it is most plain 
that we can follow with certainty the intention of 
Scripture in matters relating to salvation and neces- 
sary to blessedness; therefore, we need not be much 
troubled about what remains: such matters, inasmuch 
as we generally cannot grasp them with our reason and 
understanding, are more curious than profitable. 

I think I have now set forth the true method of 
Scriptural interpretation, and have sufficiently ex- 
plained my own opinion thereon. Besides, I do not 
doubt that every one will see that such a method only 
requires the aid of natural reason. The nature and 
efficacy of the natural reason consists in deducing and 
proving the unknown from the known, or in carrying 
premises to their legitimate conclusions; and these are 
the very processes which our method desiderates. 
Though we must admit that it does not suffice te #- 
plain everything in the Bible, such imperfection does 


28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


not spring from its own nature, but from the fact that 
the path which it teaches us, as the true one, has never 
been tended or trodden by men, and has thus, by the 
lapse of time, become very difficult, and almost im- 
passable, as, indeed, I have shown in the difficulties I 
draw attention to. 

There only remains to examine the opinions of those 
who differ from me. 

The first which comes under our notice is, that the 
light of nature has no power to interpret Scripture, but 
that a supernatural faculty is required for the task. 
What is meant by this supernatural faculty I will leave 
to its propounders to explain. Personally, I can only 
suppose that they have adopted a very obscure way of 
stating their complete uncertainty about the true 
meaning of Scripture. If we look at their interpreta- 
tions, they contain nothing supernatural, at least noth- 
ing but the merest conjectures. 

Let them be placed side by side with the interpre- 
tations of those who frankly confess that they have no 
faculty beyond their natural ones; we shall see that 
the two are just alike—both human, both long pondered 
over, both laboriously invented. To say that the 
natural reason is insufficient for such results is plainly 
untrue, firstly, for the reasons above stated, namely, 
that the difficulty of interpretating Scripture arises 
from no defect in human reason, but simply from the 
carelessness (not to say malice) of men who neglected 
the history of the Bible while there were still materials 
for inquiry; secondly, from the fact (admitted, I think, 
by all) that the supernatural faculty is a Divine gift 
granted only to the faithful. But the prophets and 


OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 29 


apostles did not preach to the faithful only, but chiefly 
to the unfaithful and wicked. Such persons, there- 
fore, were able to understand the intention of the 
prophets and apostles, otherwise the prophets and 
apostles would have seemed to be preaching to little 
boys and infants, not to men endowed with reason. 
Moses, too, would have given his laws in vain, if they 
could only be comprehended by the faithful, who need 
no law. Indeed, those who demand supernatural facul- 
ties for comprehending the meaning of the prophets 
and apostles seem truly lacking in natural faculties, so 
that we should hardly suppose such persons the pos- 
sessors of a Divine supernatural gift. 

The opinion of Maimonides was widely different. 
He asserted that each passage in Scripture admits of 
various, nay, contrary meanings; but that we could 
never be certain of any particular one till we knew 
that the passage, as we interpreted it, contained noth- 
ing contrary or repugnant to reason. If the literal 
meaning clashes with reason, though the passage seems 
in itself perfectly clear, it must be interpreted in some 
metaphorical sense. This doctrine he lays down very 
plainly in Chap. xxv. part il. of his book More Nebu- 
chim for he says: “Know that we shrink not from 
affirming that the world hath existed from eternity, 
because of what Scripture saith concerning the world’s 
creation. For the texts which teach that the world 
was created are not more in number than those which 
teach that God hath a body; neither are the approaches 
in this matter of the world’s creation closed, or even 
made hard to us: so that we should not be able to 
explain what is written, as we did when we showed that 


30 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


God hath no body, nay, peradventure, we could ex- 
plain and make fast the doctrine of the world’s eter- 
nity more easily than we did away with the doctrines 
that God hath a beatified body. Yet two things 
hinder me from doing as I have said, and believing 
that the world is eternal. As it hath been clearly 
shown that God hath not a body, we must perforce 
oxplain all those passages whereof the literal sense 
agreeth not with the demonstration, for sure it is that 
they can be so explained. But the eternity of the 
world hath not been so demonstrated, therefore it is 
not necessary to do violence to Scripture in support 
of some common opinion, whereof we might, at the 
bidding of reason, embrace the contrary.” 

Such are the words of Maimonides, and they are 
evidently sufficient to establish our point: for if he had 
been convinced by reason that the world is eternal, he 
would not have hesitated to twist and explain away 
the words of Scripture till he made them appear to 
teach this doctrine. He would have felt quite sure 
that Scripture, though everywhere plainly denying the 
eternity of the world, really intends to teach it. So 
that, however clear the meaning of Scripture may be, 
he would not feel certain of having grasped it, so long 
as he remained doubtful of the truth of what was 
written. For we are in doubt whether a thing is in 
conformity with reason, or contrary thereto, so long 
as we are uncertain of its truth, and, consequently, 
we cannot be sure whether the literal meaning of a 
passage be true or false. 

If such a theory as this were sound, I would cer- 
tainly grant that some faculty beyond the natural 


OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 31 


reason is required for interpreting Scripture. For 
nearly all things that we find in Scripture cannot be 
inferred from known principles of the natural reason, 
and therefore, we should be unable to come to any 
conclusion about their truth, or about the real mean- 
ing and intention of Scripture, but should stand in need 
of some further assistance. 

Further, the truth of this theory would involve that 
the masses, having generally no comprehension of, nor 
leisure for, detailed proofs, would be reduced to re- 
ceiving all their knowledge of Scripture on the au- 
thority and testimony of philosophers, and conse- 
quently, would be compelled to suppose that the 
interpretations given by philosophers were infallible. 

Truly this would be a new form of ecclesiastical 
authority, and a new sort of priests or pontiffs, more 
likely to excite men’s ridicule than their veneration. 
Certainly our method demands a knowledge of Hebrew 
for which the masses have no leisure; but no such ob- 
jection as the foregoing can be brought against us. 
For the ordinary Jews or Gentiles, to whom the proph- 
ets and apostles preached and wrote, understood the 
language, and consequently, the intention of the 
prophet or apostle addressing them; but they did not 
grasp the intrinsic reason of what was preached, which, 
according to Maimonides, would be necessary for an 
understanding of it. 

There is nothing, then, in our method which renders 
it necessary that the masses should follow the testi- 
mony of commentators, for I point to a set of un- 
learned people who understood the language of the 
prophets and apostles; whereas Maimonides could not 


32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


point to any such who could arrive at the prophetic or 
apostolic meaning through their knowledge of the 
causes of things. 

As to the multitude of our own time [we shall show] 
that whatsoever is necessary to salvation, though its 
reasons may be unknown, can easily be understood in 
any language, because it is thoroughly ordinary and 
usual; it 1s in such understanding as this that the 
masses acquiesce, not in the testimony of commenta- 
tors; with regard to other questions, the ignorant and 
the learned fare alike. 

But let us return to the opinion of Maimonides, and 
examine it more closely. In the first place, he supposes 
that the prophets were in entire agreement one with 
another, and that they were consummate philosophers 
and theologians; for he would have them to have based 
their conclusions on the absolute truth. Further, he 
supposes that the sense of Scripture cannot be made 
plain from Scripture itself, for the truth of things is 
not made plain therein (in that it does not prove any- 
thing, nor teach the matters of which it speaks through 
their definitions and first causes), therefore, accord- 
ing to Maimonides, the true sense of Scripture cannot 
be made plain from itself, and must not be there 
sought. 

The falsity of such a doctrine is shown in this very 
chapter, for we have shown both by reason and 
examples that the meaning of Scripture is only made 
plain through Scripture itself, and even in questions 
deducible from ordinary knowledge should be looked 
for from no other source. 

Lastly, such a theory supposes that we may explain 


OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 33 


the words of Scripture according to our preconceived 
opinions, twisting them about, and reversing or com- 
pletely changing the literal sense, however plain it 
may be. Such license is utterly opposed to the teach- 
ing of this and the [succeeding] chapters, and more- 
over, will be evident to every one as rash and excessive. 

But if we grant all this license, what can it effect 
after all? Absolutely nothing. Those things which 
cannot be demonstrated, and which make up the 
greater part of Scripture, cannot be examined by rea- 
son, and cannot therefore be explained or interpreted 
by this rule; whereas, on the contrary, by following 
our own method, we can explain many questions of this 
nature, and discuss them on a sure basis, as we have 
already shown, by reason and example. Those mat- 
ters which are by their nature comprehensible we can 
easily explain, as has been pointed out, simply by 
means of the context. 

Therefore, the method of Maimonides is clearly use- 
less: to which we may add, that it does away with all 
the certainty which the masses acquire by candid 
reading, or which is gained by any other persons in 
any other way. In conclusion, then, we dismiss 
Maimonides’ theory as harmful, useless, and absurd. 

As to the tradition of the Pharisees, we have already 
shown * that it is not consistent, while the authority of 
the popes of Rome stands in need of more credible 
evidence; the latter, indeed, I reject simply on this 
ground, for if the popes could point out to us the 
meaning of Scripture as surely as did the high priests 
of the Jews, I should not be deterred by the fact that 


1 The detailed discussion of this point has been omitted.—Epb. 


34 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


there have been heretic and impious Roman pontiffs; 
for among the Hebrew high-priests of old there were 
also heretics and impious men who gained the high- 
priesthood by improper means, but who, nevertheless, 
had Scriptural sanction for their supreme power of 
interpreting the law. (See Deut. xvii. 11, 12, and 
XXxXvilil, 10, also Malachi ii. 8). 

However, as the popes can show no such sanction, 
their authority remains open to very grave doubt, nor 
should any one be deceived by the example of the Jew- 
ish high-priests and think that the Catholic religion 
also stands in need of a pontiff; he should bear in 
mind that the laws of Moses being also the ordinary 
laws of the country, necessarily required some public 
authority to insure their observance; for, if everyone 
were free to interpret the laws of his country as he 
pleased, no state could stand, but would for that very 
reason be dissolved at once, and public rights would 
become private rights. 

With religion the case is widely different. Inas- 
much as it consists not so much in outward actions as 
in simplicity and truth of character, it stands outside 
the sphere of law and public authority. Simplicity and 
truth of character are not produced by the constraint 
of laws, nor by the authority of the state, no one the 
whole world over can be forced or legislated into a 
state of blessedness; the means required for such a 
consummation are faithful and brotherly admonition, 
sound education, and above all, free use of the indi- 
vidual judgment. 

Therefore, as the supreme right of free thinking, 
even on religion, is in every man’s power, and as it is 


OF THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE 35 


inconceivable that such power could be alienated, it 
is also in every man’s power to wield the supreme right 
and authority of free judgment in this behalf, and to 
explain and interpret religion for himself. The only 
reason for vesting the supreme authority in the inter- 
_ pretation of law, and judgment on public affairs in the 
hands of the magistrates, is that it concerns questions 
of public right. Similarly the supreme authority in 
explaining religion, and in passing judgment thereon, 
is lodged with the individual because it concerns ques- 
tions of individual right. So far, then, from the au- 
thority of the Hebrew high-priests telling in confirma- 
tion of the authority of the Roman pontiffs to interpret 
religion, it would rather tend to establish individual 
freedom of judgment. Thus in this way, also, we have 
shown that our method of interpreting Scripture is the 
best. For as the highest power of Scriptural interpre- 
tation belongs to every man, the rule for such interpre- 
tation should be nothing but the natural light of reason 
which is common to all—not any supernatural light nor 
any external authority; moreover, such a rule ought 
not to be so difficult that it can only be applied by very 
skillful philosophers, but should be adapted to the 
natural and ordinary faculties and capacity of man- 
kind. And such I have shown our method to be, for 
such difficulties as it has arise from men’s carelessness, 
and are no part of its nature. 


CHAPTER III 
OF PROPHETS AND PROPHECY * 


I 


PROPHECY, or revelation, is sure knowledge revealed 
by God to man. A prophet is one who interprets the 
revelations of God to those who are unable to attain 
to sure knowledge of the matters revealed, and there- 
fore can only apprehend them by simple faith. 

The Hebrew word for prophet is “abi,” t.e., speaker 
or interpreter, but in Scripture its meaning is restricted 
to interpreter of God, as we may learn from Exodus 
vii. 1, where God says to Moses, “See, I have made 
thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall 
be thy prophet;”’ implying that, since in interpreting 
Moses’ words to Pharaoh, Aaron acted the part of a 
prophet, Moses would be to Pharaoh as a god, or in 
the attitude of a god... . 

Now it is evident, from the definition above given, 
that prophecy really includes ordinary knowledge; for 
the knowledge which we acquire by our natural facul- 
ties depends on our knowledge of God and His eternal 
laws; but ordinary knowledge is common to all men as 
men, and rests on foundations which all share, whereas 
the multitude always strains after rarities and excep- 


1 From the Tr. Th.-P. ch. i Of Prophecy; and ch. ii of Of Prophets. 
36 


OF PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 37 


tions, and thinks little of the gifts of nature; so that, 
when prophecy is talked of, ordinary knowledge is not 
supposed to be included. Nevertheless it has as much 
right as any other to be called Divine, for God’s na- 
ture, In so far as we share therein, and God’s laws, 
dictate it to us; nor does it suffer from that to which 
we give the preéminence, except in so far as the latter 
transcends its limits and cannot be accounted for by 
natural laws taken in themselves. In respect to the 
certainty it involves, and the source from which it is 
derived, z.e., God, ordinary knowledge is no whit in- 
ferior to prophetic, unless indeed we believe, or rather 
dream, that the prophets had human bodies but super- 
human minds, and therefore that their sensations and 
consciousness were entirely different from our own. 

But, although ordinary knowledge is Divine, its 
professors cannot be called prophets, for they teach 
what the rest of mankind could perceive and appre- 
hend, not merely by simple faith, but as surely and 
honorably as themselves. 

Seeing then that our mind subjectively contains in 
itself and partakes of the nature of God, and solely 
from this cause is enabled to form notions explaining 
natural phenomena and inculcating morality, it follows 
that we may rightly assert the nature of the human 
mind (in so far as it is thus conceived) to be a primary 
cause of Divine revelation. All that we clearly and 
distinctly understand is dictated to us, as I have just 
pointed out, by the idea and nature of God; not indeed 
through words, but in a way far more excellent and 
agreeing perfectly with the nature of the mind, as all 
who have enjoyed intellectual certainty will doubtless 


38 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


attest. Here, however, my chief purpose is to speak 
of matters having reference to Scripture, so these few 
words on the light of reason will suffice. 

I will now pass on to, and treat more fully, the other 
ways and means by which God makes revelations to 
mankind, both of that which transcends ordinary 
knowledge and of that within its scope; for there is no 
reason why God should not employ other means to 
communicate what we know already by the power of 
reason. 

Our conclusions on the subject must be drawn solely 
from Scripture; for what can we affirm about matters 
transcending our knowledge except what is told us by 
the words or writings of prophets? And since there 
are, so far as I know, no prophets now alive, we have 
no alternative but to read the books of prophets 
departed, taking care the while not to reason from 
metaphor or to ascribe anything to our authors which 
they do not themselves distinctly state. I must further 
premise that the Jews never make any mention or ac- 
count of secondary, or particular causes, but in a spirit 
of religion, piety, and what is commonly called godli- 
ness, refer all things directly to the Deity. For in- 
stance, if they make money by a transaction, they say 
God gave it to them; if they desire anything, they say 
God has disposed their hearts towards it; 1f they think 
anything, they say God told them. Hence we must 
not suppose that everything is prophecy or revelation 
which is described in Scripture as told by God to any 
one, but only such things as are expressly announced 
as prophecy or revelation, or are plainly pointed to as 
such by the context. 


OF PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 39 


A perusal of the sacred books will show us that all 
God’s revelations to the prophets were made through 
words or appearances, or a combination of the two. 
_These words and appearances were of two kinds; (1) 
real when external to the mind of the prophet who heard 
or saw them, (2) imaginary when the imagination of 
the prophet was in a state which led him distinctly to 
suppose that he heard or saw them. 

With a real voice God revealed to Moses the laws 
which He wished to be transmitted to the Hebrews, as 
we may see from Exodus xxv. 22, where God says, 
“And there I will meet with thee and I will commune 
with thee from the mercy seat which is between the 
Cherubim.”” Some sort of real voice must necessarily 
have been employed, for Moses found God ready to 
communc with him at any time. This is the only in- 
stance of a real voice. 

. . . some of the Jews believe that the actual words 
_ of the Decalogue were not spoken by God, but that the 
Israelites heard a noise only, without any distinct 
words, and during its continuance apprehend the Ten 
Commandments by pure intuition; to this opinion I 
myself once inclined, seeing that the words of the 
Decalogue in Exodus are different from the words of 
the Decalogue in Deuteronomy, for the discrepancy 
seemed to imply (since God only spoke once) that the 
Ten Commandments were not intended to convey the 
actual words of the Lord, but only His meaning. How- 
ever, unless we would do violence to Scripture, we 
must certainly admit that the Israelites heard a real 
voice, for Scripture expressly says (Deui. v. 4), “God 
spake with you face to faces,” z.e., as two men ordinarily 


40 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


interchange ideas through the instrumentality of their 
two bodies; and therefore it seems more consonant 
with Holy Writ to suppose that God really did create 
a voice of some kind with which the Decalogue was 
revealed... . 

Yet not even thus is all difficulty removed, for it 
seems scarcely reasonable to affirm that a created 
thing, depending on God in the same manner as other 
created things, would be able to express or explain 
the nature of God either verbally or really by means 
of its individual organism: for instance, by declaring 
in the first person, “I am the Lord your God.” 

Certainly when any one says his mouth, “I under- 
stand,” we do not attribute the understanding to the 
mouth, but to the mind of the speaker; yet this is be- 
cause the mouth is the natural organ of a man speak- 
ing, and the hearer, knowing what understanding is, 
easily comprehends, by a comparison with himself, 
that the speaker’s mind is meant; but if we knew noth- 
ing of God beyond the mere name and wished to com- 
mune with Him, and be assured of His existence, I fail 
to see how our wish would be satisfied by the declara- 
tion of a created thing (depending on God neither 
more nor less than ourselves), “I am the Lord.” If 
God contorted the lips of Moses, or, J will not say 
Moses, but some beast, till they pronounced the words, 
“T am the Lord,” should we apprehend the Lord’s 
existence therefrom? 

Scripture seems clearly to point to the belief that 
God spoke Himself, having descended from heaven to 
Mount Sinai for the purpose—and not only that the 
Israelites heard Him speaking, but that their chief 


OF PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 41 


men beheld Him (Ex. xxiv.). Further, the laws of 
Moses which might neither be added to nor curtailed, 
and which was set up as a national standard of right, 
nowhere prescribed the belief that God is without body, 
or even without form or figure, but only ordained that 
the Jews should believe in His existence and worship 
Him alone: it forbade them to invent or fashion any 
likeness of the Deity, but this was to insure purity of 
service; because, never having seen God, they could 
not by means of images recall the likeness of God, but 
only the likeness of some created thing which might 
thus gradually take the place of God as the object of 
their adoration. Nevertheless, the Bible clearly im- 
plies that God has a form, and that Moses when he 
heard God speaking was permitted to behold it, or at 
least its hinder parts. 

Doubtless some mystery lurks in this question which 
we will discuss more fully below. For the present I 
will call attention to the passages in Scripture indicat- 
ing the means by which God has revealed His laws to 
man. 

Revelation may be through figures only (as in 1 
Chron. xxii), where God displays his anger to David 
by means of an angel bearing a sword, and also in the 
story of Balaam. 

Maimonides and others do indeed maintain that these 
and every other instance of angelic apparitions (e.¢., to 
Manoah and to Abraham offering up Isaac) occurred 
during sleep, for that no one with his eyes open ever 
could see an angel, but this is mere nonsense. The 
sole object of such commentators seemed to be to ex- 
tort from Scripture confirmations of Aristotelian quib- 


42 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


bles and their own inventions, a proceeding which I 
regard as the acme of absurdity. 

In figures, not real but existing only in the prophet’s 
imagination, God revealed to Joseph his future lord- 
ship, and in words and figures He revealed to Joshua 
that He would fight for the Hebrews, causing to appear 
an angel, as it were the captain of the Lord’s host, 
bearing a sword, and by this means communicating 
verbally. The forsaking of Israel by Providence was 
portrayed to Isaiah by a vision of the Lord, the thrice 
Holy, sitting on a very lofty throne, and the Hebrews, 
stained with the mire of their sins, sunk, as it were, in 
uncleanness, and thus as far as possible distant from 
God. The wretchedness of the people at the time was 
thus revealed, while future calamities were foretold in 
words. I could cite from Holy Writ many similar ex- 
amples, but I think they are sufficiently well known 
already anu 

We may be able quite to comprehend that God can 
communicate immediately with man, for without the 
intervention of bodily means He communicates to our 
minds His essence; still, a man who can by pure in- 
tuition comprehend ideas which are neither contained 
in nor deducible from the foundations of our natural 
knowledge, must necessarily possess a mind far su- 
perior to those of his fellow men, nor do I believe that 
any have been so endowed save Christ. To Him the 
ordinances of God leading men to salvation were re- 
vealed directly without words or visions, so that God 
manifested Himself to the Apostles through the mind 
of Christ as He formerly did to Moses through the 
supernatural voice. In this sense the voice of Christ, 


OF PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 43 


like the voice which Moses heard, may be called the 
voice of God, and it may be said that the wisdom of 
God (i.e., wisdom more than human) took upon itself 
in Christ human nature, and that Christ was the way 
of salvation. I must at this juncture declare that those. 
doctrines which certain churches put forward concern- 
ing Christ, I neither affirm nor deny, for I freely con- 
fess that I do not understand them. What I have just 
stated I gather from Scripture, where I never read 
that God appeared to Christ, or spoke to Christ, but 
that God was revealed to the Apostles through Christ; 
that Christ was the Way of Life, and that the old law 
was given through an angel, and not immediately by 
God; whence it follows that if Moses spoke with God 
face to face as a man speaks with his friend (i.e., by 
means of their two bodies) Christ communed with God 
mind to mind.’ 


1. ..I will tell you that I do not think it necessary for salvation 
to know Christ according to the flesh; but with regard to the 
Eternal Son of God, that is the Eternal Wisdom of God, which 
has manifested itself in all things and especially in the human mind, 
and above all in Christ Jesus, the case is far otherwise. For without 
this no one can come to a state of blessedness, inasmuch as it alone 
teaches what is true or false, good or evil. And, inasmuch as this 
wisdom was made especially manifest through Jesus Christ, as I 
have said, His disciples preached it, in so far as it was revealed 
to them through Him, and thus showed that they could rejoice 
in that spirit of Christ more than the rest of mankind. The doc- 
trines added by certain churches, such as that God took upon Him- 
self human nature, I have expressly said that I do not understand. 
In fact, to speak the truth, they seem to me no less absurd than 
would a statement that a circle had taken upon itself the nature 
of a square. This I think will be sufficient explanation of my opinion. 
... Whether it will be satisfactory to Christians you will know 
better than I. Farewell. From a letter to Henry Oldenburg (Nov. 
1675). 

.. . For the rest, I accept Christ’s passion, death, and burial lit- 
erally, as you do, but His resurrection I understand allegorically. I 


a4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


Thus we may conclude that no one except Christ re- 
ceived the revelations of God without the aid of im- 
agination, whether in words or vision. Therefore the 
power of prophecy implies not a peculiarly perfect 
mind, but a peculiarly vivid imagination... . 

If the Jews were at a loss to understand any phenom- 
enon, or were ignorant of its cause, they referred 
it to God. Thus a storm was termed the chiding of 
God, thunder and lightning the arrows of God, for 
it was thought that God kept the winds confined in 
caves, His treasuries; thus differing merely in name 
from the Greek wind-god Eolus. In like manner mira- 
cles were called works of God, as being especially 
marvelous; though in reality, of course, all natural 
events are the works of God, and take place solely by 
His power. The Psalmist calls the miracles in Egypt 
the works of God, because the Hebrews found in them 
ua way of safety which they had not looked for, and 
therefore especially marveled at. 

As, then, unusual natural phenomena are called 
works of God, and trees of unusual size are called trees 
of God, we cannot wonder that very strong and tall 
men, though impious robbers and whoremongers, are 
in Genesis called sons of God. 

This reference of things wonderful to God was not 


admit, that it is related by the Evangelists in such detail that we 
cannot deny that they themselves believed Christ’s body to have risen 
from the dead and ascended to heaven in order to sit at the right 
hand of God, or that they believed that Christ might have been seen 
by unbelievers, if they had happened to be at hand, in the places 
where He appeared to His disciples; but in these matters they might, 
without injury to Gospel teaching, have been deceived, as was the 
case with other prophets. .. . But Paul, to whom Christ afterwards 
appeared, rejoices that he knew Christ, not after the flesh, but after 
the spirit. From a letter to Henry Oldenbure (Jan. 1676). 


OF PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 45 


peculiar to the Jews. Pharaoh, on hearing the inter- 
pretation of his dream, exclaimed that the mind of the 
gods was in Joseph. Nebuchadnezzar told Daniel that 
he possessed the mind of the holy gods; so also in Latin 
anything well made is often said to be wrought with 
Divine hands, which is equivalent to the Hebrew 
phrase, wrought with the hand of God. 

. . . We find that the Scriptural phrases, “The 
Spirit of the Lord was upon a phophet,” “The Lord 
breathed His Spirit into men,” “Men were filled with 
the Spirit of God, with the Holy Spirit,” etc., are quite 
clear to us, and mean that the prophets were endowed 
with a peculiar and extraordinary power, and devoted 
themselves to piety with especial constancy; that thus 
they perceived the mind or the thought of God, for 
we have shown [elsewhere] that God’s spirit signifies 
in Hebrew God’s mind or thought, and that the law 
which shows His mind and thought is called His 
Spirit; hence that the imagination of the prophets, in- 
asmuch as through it were revealed the decrees of God, 
may equally be called the mind of God, and the proph- 
ets be said to have possessed the mind of God. On 
our minds also the mind of God and His eternal 
thoughts are impressed; but this being the same for all 
men is less taken into account, especially by the 
Hebrews, who claimed a preéminence, and despised 
other men and other men’s knowledge. 

[Also] the prophets were said to possess the Spirit 
of God because men knew not the cause of prophetic 
knowledge, and in their wonder referred it with other 
marvels directly to the Deity, styling it Divine knowl- 
edge. 


46 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


We need no longer scruple to affirm that the prophets 
only perceived God’s revelation by the aid of imagina- 
tion, that is, by words and figures either real or imagi- 
nary. We find no other means mentioned in Scripture, 
and therefore must not invent any. As to the particular 
law of Nature by which the communications took place, 
I confess ny ignorance. I might, indeed, say as others 
do, that they took place by the power of God; but this 
would be mere trifling, and no better than explaining 
some unique specimen by a transcendental term. 
Everything takes place by the power of God. Nature 
herself is the power of God under another name, and 
our ignorance of the power of God is co-extensive with 
our ignorance of Nature. It is absolutely folly, there- 
fore, to ascribe an event to the power of God when 
we know not its natural cause, which is the power of 
God. 

However, we are not now inquiring into the causes of 
prophetic knowledge. We are only attempting, as I 
have said, to examine the Scriptural documents, and to 
draw our conclusions from them as from ultimate 
natural facts; the causes of the documents do not 
concern us. 

As the prophets perceived the revelations of God by 
the aid of imagination, they could indisputably per- 
ceive much that is beyond the boundary of the intellect, 
for many more ideas can be constructed from words 
and figures than from the principles and notions on 
which the whole fabric of reasoned knowledge is reared. 

Thus we have a clue to the fact that the prophets 
perceived nearly everything in parables and allegories, 
and clothed spiritua] truths in bodily forms, for such 


OF PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 47 


is the usual method of imagination. We need no longer 
wonder that Scripture and the prophets speak so 
strangely and obscurely of God’s Spirit or Mind (cf. 
Numbers xi. 17, I Kings xxii, 21, etc.), that the Lord 
was seen by Micah as sitting, by Daniel as an old man 
clothed in white, by Ezekiel as a fire, that the Holy 
Spirit appeared to those with Christ as a descending 
dove, to the apostles as fiery tongues, to Paul on his 
conversion as a great light. All these expressions are 
plainly in harmony with the current ideas of God and 
spirits. 

Inasmuch as imagination is fleeting and inconstant, 
we find that the power of prophecy did not remain with 
a prophet for long, nor manifest itself frequently, but 
was very rare; manifesting itself only in a few men, 
and in them not often. 

We must necessarily inquire how the prophets be- 
came assured of the truth of what they perceived by 
imagination, and not by sure mental laws; but our 
investigation must be confined to Scripture, for the 
subject is one on which we cannot acquire certain 
knowledge, and which we cannot explain by the im- 
mediate causes. 


II 


... As I have said, the prophets were endowed 
with unusually vivid imaginations, and not with un- 
usually perfect minds. This conclusion is amply sus- 
tained by Scripture, for we are told that Solomon 
was the wisest of men, but had no special faculty of 
prophecy. Heman, Calcol, and Dara, though men of 
great talent, were not prophets, whereas uneducated 


48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


countrymen, nay, even women, such as Hagar, Abra- 
ham’s handmaid, were thus gifted. Nor is this con- 
trary to ordinary experience and reason. Men of 
great imaginative power are less fitted for abstract 
reasoning, whereas those who excel in intellect and 
its use keep their imagination more restrained and 
controlled, holding it in subjection, so to speak, lest it 
should usurp the place of reason. 

Thus to suppose that knowledge of natural and 
spiritual phenomena can be gained from the prophetic 
books, is an utter mistake, which I shall endeavor to 
expose, as I think philosophy, the age, and the ques- 
tion itself demand. I care not for the girdings of 
superstition, for superstition is the bitter enemy of all 
true knowledge and true morality. Yes; it has come 
to this! Men who openly confess that they can form 
no idea of God, and only know Him through created 
things, of which they know not the causes, can un- 
blushingly accuse philosophers of Atheism. 

Treating the question methodically, I will show that 
prophecies varied, not only according to the imagi- 
nation and physical temperament of the prophet, but 
also according to his particular opinions; and further 
that prophecy never rendered the prophet wiser than 
he was before. But I will first discuss the assurance 
of truth which the prophets received, for this is akin 
to the subject-matter of the chapter, and will serve 
to elucidate somewhat our present point. 

Imagination does not, in its own nature, involve any 
certainty of truth, such as is implied in every clear 
and distinct idea, but requires some extrinsic reason 
to assure us of its objective reality: hence prophecy 





; 


OF PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 49 


cannot afford certainty, and the prophets were assured 
of God’s revelation by some sign, and not by the fact 
of revelation, as we may see from Abraham, who, when 
he had heard the promise of God, demanded a sign, 
not because he did not believe in God but because he 
wished to be sure that it was God Who made the 
promise. The fact is still more evident in the case of 
Gideon: “Show me,” he says to God, “show me a 
sign, that I may know that it is Thou that talkest with 
me.’ God also says to Moses: “And let this be a 
sign that I have sent thee.” Hezekiah, though he had 
long known Isaiah to be a prophet, none the less de- 
manded a sign of the cure which he predicted. It is 
thus quite evident that the prophets always received 
some sign to certify them of their prophetic imagin- 
ings; and for this reason Moses bids the Jews (Deut. 
xviii.) ask of the prophets a sign, namely, the predic- 
tion of some coming event. In this respect, prophetic 
knowledge is inferior to natural knowledge, which 
needs no sign, and in itself implies certitude. More- 
over, Scripture warrants the statement that the certi- 
tude of the prophets was not mathematical, but moral. 
Moses lays down the punishment of death for the 
prophet who preaches new gods, even though he con- 
firm his doctrine by signs and wonders (Deut. xiil.); 
“For,” he says, “the Lord also worketh signs and 
wonders to try His people.” And Jesus Christ warns 
His disciples of the same thing (Matt. xxiv. 24). 
Furthermore, Ezekiel (xiv. 9) plainly states that God 
sometimes deceives men with false revelations; and 
Micaiah bears like witness in the case of the prophets 
of Ahab. 


50 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


Although these instances go to prove that revelation 
is open to doubt, it nevertheless contains, as we have 
said, a considerable element of certainty, for God 
never deceives the good, nor His chosen, but (accord- 
ing to the ancient proverb and as appears in the history 
ef Abigail and her speech), God uses the good as in- 
struments of goodness, and the wicked as means to 
execute His wrath. This may be seen from the cases 
of Micaiah above quoted; for although God had de- 
termined to deceive Ahab, through prophets, He made 
use of lying prophets; to the good prophet He re- 
vealed the truth, and did not forbid his proclaiming 
it. 

Still the certitude of prophecy remains, as I have 
said, merely moral; for no one can justify himself be- 
fore God, nor boast that he is an instrument for God’s 
goodness. Scripture itself teaches and shows that God 
led away David to number the people, though it bears 
aniple witness to David’s piety. 

The whole question of the certitude of prophecy was 
based on these three considerations :— 

1. That the things revealed were imagined very 
vividly, affecting the prophets in the same way as things 
seen when awake; 

2. The presence of a sign; 

3. Lastly and chiefly, that the mind of the prophet 
was given wholly to what was right and good. 

Although Scripture does not always make mention of 
a sign, we must nevertheless suppose that a sign was 
always vouchsafed; for Scripture does not always re- 
late every condition and circumstance (as many have 
remarked), but rather takes them for granted. We 


OF PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 51 


may, however, admit that no sign was needed when 
the prophecy declared nothing that was not already 
contained in the law of Moses, because it was con- 
firmed by that law. For instance, Jeremiah’s prophecy 
of the destruction of Jerusalem was confirmed by the 
prophecies of other prophets, and by the threats in the 
law, and therefore it needed no sign; whereas Hanan- 
iah, who, contrary to all the prophets, foretold the 
speedy restoration of the state, stood in need of a sign, 
or he would have been in doubt as to the truth of his 
prophecy, until it was confirmed by facts. “The 
prophet which prophesieth of peace, when the word of 
the prophet shall came to pass, then shall the prophet 
be known that the Lord hath truly sent him.” 

As, then, the certitude afforded to the prophet by 
signs was not mathematical (7.e., did not necessarily 
follow from the perception of the thing perceived or 
seen), but only moral, and as the signs were only given 
to convince the prophet, it follows that such signs 
were given according to the opinions and capacity of 
each prophet, so that a sign which would convince one 
prophet would fall far short of convincing another who 
was imbued with different opinions. Therefore the 
signs varied according to the individual prophet. 

So also did the revelation vary, as we have stated, 
according to individual disposition and temperament, 
and according to the opinions previously held. 

It varied according to disposition, in this way: if a 
prophet was cheerful, victories, peace, and events which 
make men glad, were revealed to him; in that he was 
naturally more likely to imagine such things. If, on 
the contrary, he was melancholy, wars, massacres, and 


az THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


calamities were revealed; and so, according as a 
prophet was merciful, gentle, quick to anger, or severe, 
he was more fitted for one kind of revelation than an- 
other. It varied according to the temper of imagina- 
tion in this way: if a prophet was cultivated he per- 
ceived the mind of God in a cultivated way, if he was 
confused he perceived it confusedly. And so with 
revelations perceived through visions. If a prophet 
was a countryman he saw visions of oxen, cows, and 
the like; if he was a soldier, he saw generals and 
armies; if a courtier, a royal throne, and so on. 

Lastly, prophecy varied according to the opinions 
held by the prophets; for instance, to the Magi, who 
believed in the follies of astrology, the birth of Christ 
was revealed through the vision of a star in the East. 
To the augurs of Nebuchadnezzar the destruction of 
Jerusalem was revealed through entrails, whereas the 
king himself inferred it from oracles and the direction 
of arrows which he shot into the air. To prophets who 
believed that man acts from free choice and by his 
own power, God was revealed as standing apart from 
and ignorant of future human actions. All of which 
we will illustrate from Scripture. . 

The style of the prophecy also varied according to 
the eloquence of the individual prophet. The prophe- 
cies of Ezekiel and Amos are not written in a cultivated 
style like those of Isaiah and Nahum, but more rudely. 
Any Hebrew scholar who wishes to inquire into this 
point more closely, and comnares chanters of the dif- 
ferent prophets treating of the same subiect, will find 
that God has no particular style in speaking, but, ac- 
cording to the learning and capacity of the prophet, is 


OF PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 53 


cultivated, compressed, severe, untutored, prolixed or 
Bosc urens, a. 

Every one has been strangely hasty in affirming that 
the prophets knew everything within the scope of 
human intellect; and, although certain passages of 
Scripture plainly affirm that the prophets were in cer- 
tain respects ignorant, such persons would rather say 
that they do not understand the passages than admit 
that there was anything which the prophets did not 
know; or else they try to wrest the Scriptural words 
away from their evident meaning. 

If either of these proceedings is allowable we may 
as well shut our Bibles, for vainly shall we attempt to 
prove anything from them if their plainest passages 
may be classed among obscure and impenetrable mys- 
teries, or if we may put any interpretation on them 
which we fancy. For instance, nothing is more clear 
in the Bible than that Joshua, and perhaps also the 
author who wrote his history, thought that the sun 
revolves round the earth, and that the earth is fixed, 
and further that the sun for a certain period remained 
still. Many, who will not admit any movement in the 
heavenly bodies, explain away the passage till it seems 
to mean something quite different; others, who have 
learned to philosophize more correctly, and understand 
that the earth moves while the sun is still, or at any 
rate does not revolve round the earth, try with all 
their might to wrest this meaning from Scripture, 
though plainly nothing of the sort is intended. Such 
quibblers excite my wonder! Are we, forsooth, bound 
to believe that Joshua the soldier was a learned astron- 
omer? or that a miracle could not be revealed to him, 


54 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


or that the light of the sun could not remain longer 
than usual above the horizon, without his knowing the 
cause? To me both alternatives appear’ridiculous, and 
therefore I would rather say that Joshua was ignorant 
of the true cause of the lengthened day, and that he 
and the whole host with him thought that the sun 
moved round the earth everv dav, and that on that 
particular occasion it stood still for a time, thus caus- 
ing the light to remain longer: and I would say that 
they did not conjecture that, from the amount of snow 
in the air (see Josh. x. 11), the refraction may have 
been greater than usual, or that there may have been 
some other cause which we will not now inquire into. 
So also the sign of the shadow going back was re- 
vealed to Isaiah according to his understanding; that 
is, aS proceeding from a going backwards of the sun; 
for he, too, thought that the sun moves and that the 
earth is still; of parhelia he perhaps never even 
dreamed. We may arrive at this conclusion without 
any scruple, for the sign could really have come to 
pass, and have been predicted by Isaiah to the king, 
without the prophet being aware of the real cause. 
With regard to the building of the Temple by Solo- 
mon, if it was really dictated by God we must maintain 
the same doctrine: namely, that all the measurements 
were revealed according to the opinions and under- 
standing of the king; for as we are not bound to believe 
that Solomon was a mathematician, we may affirm that 
he was ignorant of the true ratio between the circumfer- 
ence and the diameter of a circle, and that, like the 
generality of workmen, he thought that it was as three 
to one. But if it is allowable to declare that we do not 


OF PROPHETS AND PROPHECY oh 


understand the passage, in good sooth I know nothing 
in the Bible that we can understand; for the process 
of building is there narrated simply and as a mere 
matter of history. If, again, it is permitted to pretend 
that the passage has another meaning, and was written 
as it is from some reason unknown to us, this is no less 
than a complete subversal of the Bible; for every 
absurd and evil invention of human perversity could 
thus, without detriment to Scriptural authority, be de- 
fended and fostered. Our conclusion is in no wise 
impious, for though Solomon, Isaiah, Joshua, etc., 
were prophets, they were none the less men, and as 
such not exempt from human shortcomings. 

According to the understanding of Noah it was 
revealed to him that God was about to destroy 
the whole human race, for Noah thought that be- 
yond the limits of Palestine the world was not in- 
habited. 

Not only in matters of this kind, but in others more 
important, the prophets could be, and in fact were, 
ignorant; for they taught nothing special about the 
Divine attributes, but held quite ordinary notions about 
God, and to these notions their revelations were 
adapted, as I will demonstrate by ample Scriptural 
testimony; from all which one may easily see that 
they were praised and commended, not so much for 
the sublimity and eminence of their intellect as for 
their piety and faithfulness. 

Adam, the first man to whom God was revealed, dia 
not know that He is omnipotent and omniscient; for 
he hid himself from Him, and attempted to make ex- 
cuses for his fault before God, as though he had het 


56 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


to do with a man; therefore to him also was God re- 
vealed according to his understanding—that is, as be- 
ing unaware of his situation or his sin, for Adam heard, 
or seemed to hear, the Lord walking in the garden, 
calling him and asking him where he was; and then, on 
seeing his shamefacedness, asking him whether he had 
eaten of the forbidden fruit. Adam evidently only 
knew the Deity as the Creator of all things. To Cain 
also God was revealed, according to his understanding, 
as ignorant of human affairs, nor was a higher con- 
ception of the Deity required for repentance of his 
sin. 

To Laban the Lord revealed Himself as the God of 
Abraham, because Laban believed that each nation 
had its own special divinity (see Gen. xxxi. 29). Abra- 
ham also knew not that God is omnipresent, and has 
foreknowledge of all things; for when he heard the 
sentence against the inhabitants of Sodom, he prayed 
that the Lord should not execute it till He had ascer- 
tained whether they all merited such punishment; for 
he said (see Gen. xviii. 24), ““Peradventure there be 
fifty righteous within the city,’’ and in accordance with 
this belief God was revealed to him; as Abraham im- 
agined, He spake thus: “I will go down now, and see 
whether they have done altogether according to the 
cry of it which is come unto Me; and if not I will 
know.” Further, the Divine testimony concerning 
Abraham asserts nothing but that he was obedient, and 
that he “commanded his household after him that they 
should keep the way of the Lord” (Gen. xvili. 19); 
it does not state that he held sublime conceptions of 
the Deity. 


OF PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 57 


Moses, also, was not sufficiently aware that God is 
omniscient, and directs human actions by His sole 
decree, for although God himself says that the Israel- 
ites should hearken to Him, Moses still considered the 
matter doubtful and repeated, “But if they will not 
believe me, nor hearken unto my voice.” To him in 
like manner God was revealed as taking no part in, 
and as being ignorant of, future human actions: the 
Lord gave him two signs and said, “‘And it shall come 
to pass that if they will not believe thee, neither 
hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will 
believe the voice of the latter sign; but if not, thou 
shalt take of the water of the river,” etc. Indeed, if 
any one considers without prejudice the recorded 
opinions of Moses, he will plainly see that Moses con- 
ceived the Deity as a Being Who has always existed, 
does exist, and always will exist, and for this cause 
he calls Him by the name Jehovah, which in Hebrew 
signifies these three phases of existence: as to His 
nature, Moses only taught that He is merciful, gracious, 
and exceeding jealous, as appears from many passages 
in the Pentateuch. Lastly, he believed and taught that 
this Being was so different from all other beings, that 
He could not be expressed by the image of any visible 
thing; also, that He could not be looked upon, and 
that not so much from inherent impossibility as from 
human infirmity; further, that by reason of His power 
He was without equal and unique. Moses admitted, 
indeed, that there were beings (doubtless by the plan 
and command of the Lord) who acted as God’s vice- 
gerents—that is, beings to whom God had given the 
right, authority, and power to direct nations, and to 


58 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


provide and care for them; but he taught that this 
Being Whom they were bound to obey was the highest 
and Supreme God, (or to use the Hebrew phrase) God 
of gods, and thus in the song (Exod. xv. ii) he ex- 
claims, ‘Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the 
gods?” and Jethro says (Exod. xviii. 11), ““Now I know 
that the Lord is greater than all gods.” That is to say, 
“IT am at length compelled to admit to Moses that Je- 
hovah is greater than all gods, and that His power is 
unrivalled.”” We must remain in doubt whether Moses 
thought that these beings who acted as God’s vice- 
gerents were created by Him, for he has stated nothing, 
so far as we know, about their creation and origin. 
He further taught that this Being had brought the 
visible world into order from Chaos, and had given 
Nature her germs, and therefore that He possesses 
supreme right and power over all things; further, that 
by reason of this supreme right and power He had 
chosen for Himself alone the Hebrew nation and a 
certain strip of territory, and had handed over to the 
care of other gods substituted by Himself the rest of 
the nations and territories, and that therefore He was 
called the God of Israel and the God of Jerusalem, 
whereas the other gods were called the gods of the 
Gentiles. For this reason the Jews believed that the 
strip of territory which God had chosen for Himself, 
demanded a Divine worship quite apart and different 
from the worship which obtained elsewhere, and that 
the Lord would not suffer the worship of other gods 
adapted to other countries. Thus they thought that 
the people whom the king of Assyria had brought into 
Judzea were torn in pieces by lions because they knew 


OF PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 59 


not the worship of the National Divinity (2 Kings 
ati 25) eee 

If we now examine the revelations to Moses, we shall 
find that they were accommodated to these opinions; 
as he believed that the Divine Nature was subject to 
the conditions of mercy, graciousness, etc., so God was 
revealed to him in accordance with his idea and under 
these attributes (see Exodus xxxiv. 6, 7, and the second 
commandment). Further it is related (Ex. xxxill. 18) 
that Moses asked of God that he might behold Him, 
but as Moses (as we have said) had formed no mental 
image of God, and God (as I have shown) only re- 
vealed Himself to the prophets in accordance with the 
disposition of their imagination, He did not reveal 
Himself in any form. This, I repeat, was because the 
imagination of Moses was unsuitable, for other proph- 
ets bear witness that they saw the Lord; for in- 
stance, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, etc. For this reason 
God answered Moses, “Thou canst not see My face;” 
and inasmuch as Moses believed that God can be 
looked upon—that is, that no contradiction of the 
‘Divine nature is therein involved (for otherwise he 
would never have preferred his request )—it is added, 
“For no one shall look on Me and live,” thus giving a 
reason in accordance with Moses’ idea, for it is not 
stated that a contradiction of the Divine nature would 
be involved, as was really the case, but that the thing 
would not come to pass because of human infirm- 
rovee 

Lastly, as Moses believed that God dwelt in the 
heavens, God was revealed to him as coming down 
from heaven on to a mountain, and in order to talk 


60 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


with the Lord Moses went up the mountain, which he 
certainly need not have done if he could have con- 
ceived of God as omnipresent. 

The Israelites knew scarcely anything of God, al- 
though He was revealed to them; and this is abundantly 
evident from their transferring, a few days afterwards, 
the honor and worship due to Him to a calf, which 
they believed to be the god who had brought them out 
of Egypt. In truth, it is hardly likely that men ac- 
customed to the superstitions of Egypt, uncultivated 
and sunk in most abject slavery, should have held any 
sound notions about the Deity, or that Moses. should 
have taught them anything beyond a rule of right liv- 
ing; inculcating it not like a philosopher, as the result 
of freedom, but like a lawgiver compelling them to 
be moral by legal authority. Thus the rule of right 
living, the worship and love of God, was to them rather 
a bondage than the true liberty, the gift and grace 
of the Deity. Moses bid them love God and keep 
His law, because they had in the past received bene- 
fits from Him (such as the deliverance from slavery 
in Egypt), and further terrified them with threats if 
they transgressed His commands, holding out many 
promises of good if they should observe them; thus 
treating them as parents treat irrational children. It 
is, therefore, certain that they knew not the excellence 
of virtue and the true happiness. 

Jonah thought that he was fleeing from the sight of 
God, which seems to show that he too held that God 
had entrusted the care of the nations outside Judza to 
other substituted powers. No one in the whole of the 
Old Testament speaks more rationally of God than 


OF PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 61 


Solomon, who in fact surpassed all the men of his time 
in natural ability. Yet he considered himself above the 
law (esteeming it only to have been given for men 
without reasonable and intellectual grounds for their 
actions), and made small account of the laws con- 
cerning kings, which are mainly three: nay, he openly 
violated them (in this he did wrong, and acted in a 
manner unworthy of a philosopher, by indulging in sen- 
sual pleasure), and taught that all Fortune’s favors 
to mankind are vanity, that humanity has no nobler 
gift than wisdom, and no greater punishment than 
folly. (See Proverbs xvi. 22, 23.) 

. . . God adapted revelations to the understanding 
and opinions of the prophets, and . . . in matters of 
theory without bearing on charity or morality, the 
prophets could be, and, in fact, were ignorant, and 
held conflicting opinions. It therefore follows that we 
must by no means go to the prophets for knowledge, 
either of natural or of spiritual phenomena. 

We have determined, then, that we are only bound 
to believe in the prophetic writings, the object and 
substance of the revelation; with regard to the details, 
every one may believe or not, as he likes. 

For instance, the revelation to Cain only teaches us 
that God admonished him to lead the true life, for 
such alone is the object and substance of the revela- 
tion, not doctrines concerning free will and philosophy. 
Hence, though the freedom of the will is clearly 
implied in the words of the admonition, we are at 
liberty to hold a contrary opinion, since the words 
and reasons were adapted to the understanding of 
Cain. 


62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


So, too, the revelation to Micaiah would only teach 
that God revealed to him the true issue of the battle 
between Ahab and Aram; and this is all we are bound 
to believe. Whatever else is contained in the revel- 
ation concerning the true and the false Spirit of God, 
the army of heaven standing on the right hand and on 
the left, and all the other details, does not affect us at 
all. Every one may believe as much of it as his reason 
allows. 

The reasonings by which the Lord displayed His 
power to Job (if they really were a revelation, and the 
author of the history is narrating, and not merely, as 
some suppose, rhetorically adorning his own concep- 
tions), would come under the same category—that is, 
they were adapted to Job’s understanding, for the pur- 
pose of convincing him, and are not universal, or for 
the convincing of all men. 

We can come to no different conclusion with respect 
to the reasonings of Christ, by which He convicted 
the Pharisees of pride and ignorance, and exhorted 
His disciples to lead the true life. He adapted them 
to each man’s opinions and principles. For instance, 
when He said to the Pharisees (Matt. xii. 26), “And 
if Satan cast out devils, his house is divided against 
itself, how then shall his kingdom stand?” He only 
wished to convince the Pharisees according to their 
own principles, not to teach that there are devils, or 
any kingdom of devils. So, too, when He said to 
His disciples (Matt. viii. 10), “See that ye despise 
not one of these little ones, for I say unto you that 
their angels,” etc., He merely desired to warn them 
against pride and despising any of their fellows, not 


OF PROPHETS AND PROPHECY 63 


to insist on the actual reason given, which was simply 
adopted in order to persuade them more easily. 

Lastly, we should say exactly the same of the 
apostolic signs and reasonings, but there is no need 
to go further into the subject. If I were to enumerate 
all the passages of Scripture addressed only to in- 
dividuals, or to a particular man’s understanding, and 
which cannot, without great danger to philosophy, be 
defended as Divine doctrines, I should go far beyond 
the brevity at which I aim. Let it suffice then, to have 
indicated a few instances of general application, and 
let the curious reader consider others by himself. 
Although the points we have just raised concerning 
prophets and prophecy are the only ones which have 
any direct bearing on the end in view, namely, the 
separation of Philosophy from Theology, still, as I 
have touched on the general question, I may here in- 
quire whether the gift of prophecy was peculiar to 
the Hebrews, or whether it was common to all nations. 
I must then come to a conclusion about the vocation 
of the Hebrews, all of which I shall do in the ensuing 
chapter. 


CHAPTER IV 
OF THE VOCATION OF THE HEBREWS? 


EVERY man’s true happiness and blessedness consist 
solely in the enjoyment of what is good, not in the 
pride that he alone is enjoying it, to the exclusion of 
others. He who thinks himself the more blessed be- 
cause he is enjoying benefits which others are not, or 
because he is more blessed or more fortunate than his 
fellows, is ignorant of true happiness and blessedness, 
and the joy which he feels is either childish or envious 
and malicious. For instance, a man’s true happiness 
consists only in wisdom, and the knowledge of the 
truth, not at all in the fact that he is wiser than others, 
or that others lack such knowledge: such considera- 
tions do not increase his wisdom or true happiness. 

Whoever, therefore, rejoices for such reasons, re- 
joices in another’s misfortune, and is, so far, malicious 
and bad, knowing neither true happiness nor the peace 
of the true life. 

When Scripture, therefore, in exhorting the Hebrews 
to obey the law, says that the Lord has chosen them 
for Himself before other nations (Deut. x. 15); that 
He is near them, but not near others (Deut. iv. 7); 
that to them alone He has given just laws (Deut. iv. 
_ 8); and, lastly, that He has marked them out before 
others (Deut. iv. 32); it speaks only according to the 


1From the Jr. Th.-P., ch. iii., same title. 
64 


OF THE VOCATION OF THE HEBREWS 65 


understanding of its hearers, who, as we have shown 
in the last chaper, and as Moses also testified (Deut. 
ix. 6, 7), knew not true blessedness. For in good 
sooth they would have been no less blessed if God had 
called all men equally to salvation, nor would God 
have been less present to them for being equally pres- 
ent to others; their laws would have been no less 
just if they had been ordained for all, and they them- 
selves would have been no less wise. The miracles 
would have shown God’s power no less by being 
wrought for other nations also; lastly, the Hebrews 
would have been just as much bound to worship God 
if He had bestowed all these gifts equally on all men. 

When God tells Solomon (I Kings iii. 12) that no 
one shall be as wise as he in time to come, it seems 
to be only a manner of expressing surpassing wisdom; 
it is little to be believed that God would have promised 
Solomon, for his greater happiness, that He would 
never endow any one with so much wisdom in time to 
come; this would in no wise have increased Solomon’s 
intellect, and the wise king would have given equal 
thanks to the Lord if every one had been gifted with 
the same faculties. 

Still, though we assert that Moses, in the passages 
of the Pentateuch just cited, spoke only according to 
the understanding of the Hebrews, we have no wish 
to deny that God ordained the Mosaic law for them 
alone, nor that He spoke to them alone, nor that they 
witnessed marvels beyond those which happened to 
any other nation; but we wish to emphasize that Moses 
desired to admonish the Hebrews in such a manner 
and with such reasonings as would appeal most forcibly 


66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


to their childish understanding and constrain them to 
worship the Deity. Further, we wished to show that 
the Hebrews did not surpass other nations in knowl- 
edge, or in piety, but evidently in some attribute dif- 
ferent from these; or (to speak like the Scriptures, ac- 
cording to their understanding), that the Hebrews were 
not chosen by God before others for the sake of the 
true life and sublime ideas, though they were often 
thereto admonished, but with some other object. What 
that object was I will duly show. 

But before I begin, I wish in a few words to explain 
what I mean by the guidance of God, by the help of 
God, external and inward, and lastly, what I under- 
stand by fortune. 

By the help of God, I mean the fixed and unchange- 
able order of nature or the chain of natural events: 
for I have said before and shown elsewhere that the 
universal laws of nature, according to which all things 
exist and are determined, are only another name for 
the eternal decrees of God, which always involve 
eternal truth and necessity. 

So that to say that everything happens according 
to natural laws, and to say that everything is ordained 
by the decree and ordinance of God, is the same thing. 
Now since the power in Nature is identical with the 
power of God, by which alone all things happen and 
are determined, it follows that whatsoever man, as a 
part of Nature, provides himself with to aid and pre- 
serve his existence, or whatsoever Nature affords him 
without his help, is given to him solely by the Divine 
power, acting either through human nature or through 
external circumstance. So whatever human nature 


OF THE VOCATION OF THE HEBREWS _ 67 


can furnish itself with by its own efforts to preserve 
its existence, may be fitly called the inward aid of 
God, whereas whatever else accrues to man’s profit 
from outward causes may be called the external aid of 
God. 

We can now easily understand what is meant by the 
election of God. For since no one can do anything 
save by the predetermined order of Nature, that is by 
God’s eternal ordinance and decree, it follows that no 
one can choose a plan of life for himself, or accomplish 
any work save by God’s vocation choosing him for 
the work or the plan of life in question, rather than 
any other. Lastly, by fortune, I mean the ordinance 
of God in so far as it directs human life through ex- 
ternal and unexpected means. With these prelimi- 
naries I return to my purpose of discovering the reason 
why the Hebrews were said to be elected by God be- 
fore other nations, and with the demonstration I thus 
proceed. 

All objects of legitimate desire fall, generally speak- 
ing, under one of these three categories: — 

1. The knowledge of things through their primary 
causes. 

2. The government of the passions, or the acquire- 
ment of the habit of virtue. 

3. Secure and healthy life. 

The means which most directly conduce towards the 
first two of these ends, and which may be considered 
their proximate and efficient causes are contained in 
human nature itself, so that their acquisition hinges 
only on our own power, and on the laws of human na- 
ture. It may be concluded that these gifts are not 


68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


peculiar to any nation, but have always been shared 
by the whole human race, unless, indeed, we would 
indulge the dream that Nature formerly created men 
of different kinds. But the means which conduce to 
security and health are chiefly in external circum- 
stance, and are called the gifts of fortune because they 
depend chiefly on objective causes of which we are 
ignorant; for a fool may be almost as liable to hap- 
piness or unhappiness as a wise man. Nevertheless, 
human management and watchfulness can greatly assist 
towards living in security and warding off the injuries 
of our fellow men, and even of beasts. Reason and 
experience show no more certain means of attaining 
this object than the formation of a society with fixed 
laws, the occupation of a strip of territory, and the 
concentration of all forces, as it were, into one body, 
that is the social body. Now for forming and preserv- 
ing a society, no ordinary ability and care is required: 
that society will be most secure, most stable, and least 
liable to reverses, which is founded and directed by 
far-seeing and careful men; while, on the other hand, 
a society constituted by men without trained skill, de- 
pends in a great measure on fortune, and is less con- 
stant. If, in spite of all, such a society lasts a long 
time, it is owing to some other directing influence than 
its own; if it overcomes great perils and its affairs 
prosper, it will perforce marvel at and adore the guid- 
ing Spirit of God (in so far, that is, as God works 
through hidden means, and not through the nature and 
mind of man), for everything happens to it unex- 
pectedly and contrary to anticipation, it may even be 
said and thought to be by miracle. Nations, then, are 
distinguished from one another in respect to the social 


oe = s 


OF THE VOCATION OF THE HEBREWS 69 


organization and the laws under which they live and 
are governed; the Hebrew nation was not chosen by 
God in respect to its wisdom nor its tranquillity of 
mind, but in respect to its social organization and the 
good fortune with which it obtained supremacy and 
kept it so many years. This is abundantly clear from 
Scripture. Even a cursory perusal will show us that 
the only respects in which the Hebrews surpassed 
other nations, are in their successful conduct of mat- 
ters relating to government, and in their surmounting 
great perils solely by God’s external aid; in other ways 
they were on a par with their fellows, and God was 
equally gracious to all. For in respect to intellect (as 
we have shown in the last chapter) they held very 
ordinary ideas about God and Nature, so that they 
cannot have been God’s chosen in this respect; nor 
were they so chosen in respect of virtue and the true 
life, for here again they, with the exception of a very 
few elect, were on an equality with other nations: 
therefore their choice and vocation consisted only in 
the temporal happiness and advantages of independent 
rule. In fact, we do not see that God promised any- 
thing beyond this to the patriachs or their successors; 
in the law no other reward is offered for obedience 
than the continual happiness of an independent com- 
monwealth and other goods of this life; while, on the 
other hand, against contumacy and the breaking of the 
covenant is threatened the downfall of the common- 
wealth and great hardships. Nor is this to be won- 
dered at; for the ends of every social organization and 
commonwealth are (as appears from what we have 
said, and as we will explain more at length hereafter) 
security and comfort; a commonwealth can only exist 


70 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


by the laws being binding on all. If all the members 
of a state wish to disregard the law, by that very fact 
they dissolve the state and destroy the commonwealth. 
Thus, the only reward which could be promised to the 
Hebrews for continued obedience to the law was se- 
curity and its attendant advantages, while no surer 
punishment could be threatened for disobedience, than 
the ruin of the state and the evils which generally fol- 
low therefrom, in addition to such further consequences 
as might accrue to the Jews in particular from the 
ruin of their especial state. But there is no need here 
to go into this point at more length. I will only add 
that the laws of the Old Testament were revealed and 
ordained to the Jews only, for as God chose them in 
respect to the special constitution of their society and 
government, they must, of course, have had special 
laws. Whether God ordained special laws for other 
nations also, and revealed Himself to their lawgivers 
prophetically, that is, under the attributes by which 
the latter were accustomed to imagine Him, I cannot 
sufficiently determine. It is evident from Scripture 
itself that other nations acquired supremacy and par- 
ticular laws by the external aid of God. 

If any one wishes to maintain that the Jews... 
have been chosen by God for ever, I will not gainsay 
him if he will admit that this choice, whether temporary 
or eternal, has no regard, in so far as it is peculiar to the 
Jews, to aught but dominion and physical advantages 
(for by such alone can one nation be distinguished 
from another), whereas in regard to intellect and true 
virtue, every nation is on a par with the rest, and God 
has not in these respects chosen one people rather than 
another. 


CHAPTER V 


OF THE DIVINE LAW* 


THE word law, taken in the abstract means that by 
which an individual, or all things, or as many things 
as belong to a particular species, act in one and the 
same fixed and definite manner, which manner depends 
either on natural necessity or on human decree. A 
law which depends on natural necessity is one which 
necessarily follows from the nature, or from the de- 
finition of the thing in question; a law which depends 
on human decree, and which is more correctly called 
an ordinance, is one which men have laid down for 
themselves and others in order to live more safely or 
conveniently, or from some similar reason. 

For example, the law that all bodies impinging on 
lesser bodies, lose as much of their own motion as they 
communicate to the latter is a universal law of all 
bodies, and depends on natural necessity. So, too, the 
law that a man in remembering one thing, straightway 
remembers another either like it, or which he had per- 
ceived simultaneously with it, is a law which necessarily 
follows from the nature of man. But the law that 
men must yield, or be compelled to yield, somewhat 
of their natural right, and that they bind themselves 


1From the 7r. Th.-P., ch. iv., same title. 
71 


If THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


to live in a certain way, depends on human decree. 
Now, though I freely admit that all things are pre- 
determined by universal natural laws to exist and op- 
erate in a given, fixed, and definite manner, I still assert 
that the laws I have just mentioned depend on human 
decree. 

(1.) Because man, in so far as he is a part of Nature, 
constitutes a part of the power of Nature. Whatever, 
therefore, follows necessarily from the necessity of 
human nature (that is, from Nature herself, in so far 
as we conceive of her as acting through man) follows, 
even though it be necessarily, from human power. 
Hence the sanction of such laws may very well be said 
to depend on man’s decree, for it principally depends 
on the power of the human mind; so that the human 
mind in respect to its perception of things as true and 
false, can readily be conceived as without such laws, 
but not without necessary law as we have just defined 
it. 

(2.) I have stated that these laws depend on human 
decree because it is well to define and explain things 
by their proximate causes. The general consideration 
of fate and the concatenation of causes would aid us 
very little in forming and arranging our ideas concern- 
ing particular questions. Let us add that as to the 
actual coordination and concatenation of things, that 
is how things are ordained and linked together, we 
are obviously ignorant; therefore, it is more profitable 
for right living, nay, it is necessary for us to consider 
things as contingent. So much about law in the ab- 
stract. 

Now the word law seems to be only applied to natural 


OF THE DIVINE LAW 73 


phenomena by analogy, and is commonly taken to 
signify a command which men can either obey or 
neglect, inasmuch as it restrains human nature within 
certain originally exceeded limits, and therefore lays 
down no rule beyond human strength. ‘Thus it is ex- 
pedient to define law more particularly as a plan of 
life laid down by man for himself or others with a 
certain object. 

However, as the true object of legislation is only 
perceived by a few, and most men are almost incapable 
of grasping it, though they live under its conditions, 
legislators, with a view to exacting general obedience, 
have wisely put forward another object, very different 
from that which necessarily follows from the nature 
of law: they promise to the observers of the law that 
which the masses chiefly desire, and threaten its vio- 
lators with that which they chiefly fear: thus endeavor- 
ing to restrain the masses, as far as may be, like a 
horse with a curb; whence it follows that the word 
law is chiefly applied to the modes of life enjoined 
on men by the sway of others; hence those who obey 
the law are said to live under it and to be under com- 
pulsion. In truth, a man who renders every one their 
due because he fears the gallows, acts under the sway 
and compulsion of others, and cannot be called just. 
But a man who does the same from a knowledge of the 
true reason for laws and their necessity, acts from a 
firm purpose and of his own accord, and is therefore 
properly called just. This, I take it, is Paul’s meaning 
when he says, that those who live under the law can- 
not. be justified through the law, for justice, as com- 
monly defined, is the constant and perpetual will to 


74 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


render every man his due. Thus Solomon says (Prov. 
xxl. 15), “It is a Joy to the just to do judgment,” but 
the wicked fear. 

Law, then, being a plan of living which men have 
for a certain object laid down for themselves or others, 
may, as it seems, be divided into human law and Divine 
law. 

By human law I mean a plan of living which serves 
only to render life and the state secure. 

By Divine law I mean that which only regards the 
highest good, in other words, the true knowledge of 
God and love. 

I call this law Divine because of the nature of the 
highest good, which I will here shortly explain as 
clearly as I can. 

Inasmuch as the intellect is the best part of our 
being, it is evident that we should make every effort to 
perfect it as far as possible if we desire to search for 
what is really profitable to us. For in intellectual per- 
fection the highest good should consist. Now, since 
all our knowledge, and the certainty which removes 
every doubt, depend solely on the knowledge of 
God;—firstly, because without God nothing can exist 
or be conceived; secondly, because so long as we 
have no clear and distinct idea of God we may remain 
in universal doubt—it follows that our highest good 
and perfection also depend solely on the knowledge of 
God. Further, since without God nothing can exist 
or be conceived, it is evident that all natural phenomena 
involve and express the conception of God as far as 
their essence and perfection extend, so that we have 
greater and more perfect knowledge of God in propor- 





OF THE DIVINE LAW 75 


tion to our knowledge of natural phenomena: con- 
versely (since the knowledge of an effect through its 
cause is the same thing as the knowledge of a partic- 
ular property of a cause) the greater our knowledge 
of natural phenomena, the more perfect is our knowl- 
edge of the essence of God (which is the cause of all 
things). So, then, our highest good not only depends 
on the knowledge of God, but wholly consists therein; 
and it further follows that man is perfect or the re- 
verse in proportion to the nature and perfection of the 
object of his special desire; hence the most perfect 
and the chief sharer in the highest blessedness is he 
who prizes above all else, and takes especial delight 
in the intellectual knowledge of God, the most per- 
fect Being. 

Hither, then, our highest good and our highest 
blessedness aim—namely, to the knowledge and love 
of God; therefore the means demanded by this aim of 
all human actions, that is, by God in so far as the idea 
of him is in us, may be called the commands of God, 
because they proceed, as it were, from God Himself, 
inasmuch as He exists in our minds, and the plan of 
life which has regard to this aim may be fitly called 
the law of God. 

The nature of the means, and the plan of life which 
this aim demands, how the foundations of the best 
states follow its lines, and how men’s life is conducted, 
are questions pertaining to general ethics. Here I 
only proceed to treat of the Divine law in a veatig trai 
application. 

As the love of God is man’s anintest happiness he 
blessedness, and the ultimate end and aim of all human 


76 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


actions, it follows that he alone lives by the Divine 
law who loves God not from fear of punishment, or 
from love of any other object, such as sensual pleasure, 
fame, or the like; but solely because he has knowledge 
of God, or is convinced that the knowledge and love of 
God is the highest good. The sum and chief precept, 
then, of the Divine law is to love God as the highest 
good, namely, as we have said, not from fear of any 
pains and penalties or from the love of any other 
object in which we desire to take pleasure. The idea 
of God lays down the rule that God is our highest 
good—in other words, that the knowledge and love of 
God is the ultimate aim to which all our actions should 
be directed. The worldling cannot understand these 
things, they appear foolishness to him, because he has 
too meager a knowledge of God, and also because in 
this highest good he can discover nothing which he can 
handle or eat, or which affects the fleshly appetites 
wherein he chiefly delights, for it consists solely in 
thought and the pure reason. They, on the other 
hand, who know that they possess no greater gift than 
intellect and sound reason, will doubtless accept what 
I have said without question. 

We have now explained that wherein the Divine law 
chiefly consists, and what are human laws, namely, all 
those which have a different aim unless they have been 
ratified by revelation, for in this respect also things 
are referred to God (as we have shown above) and in 
this sense the law of Moses, although it was not uni- 
versal, but entirely adapted to the disposition and par- 
ticular preservation of a single people, may yet be 
called a law of God or Divine law, inasmuch as we 


OF THE DIVINE LAW 77 


believe that it was ratified by prophetic insight. If we 
consider the nature of natural Divine law as we have 
just explained it, we shall see 

I. That it is universal or common to all men, for 
we have deduced it from universal human nature. 

II. That it does not depend on the truth of any 
historical narrative whatsoever, for inasmuch as this 
natural Divine law is comprehended solely by the con- 
sideration of human nature, it is plain that we can con- 
ceive it as existing as well in Adam as in any other 
man, as well in a man living among his fellows as in 
a man who lives by himself. 

The truth of a historical narrative, however assured, 
cannot give us the knowledge nor consequently the love 
of God, for love of God springs from knowledge of 
Him, and knowledge of Him should be derived from 
general ideas, in themselves certain and known, so that 
the truth of a historical narrative is very far from 
being a necessary requisite for our attaining our high- 
est good. 

Still, though the truth of histories cannot give us the 
knowledge and love of God, I do not deny that read- 
ing them is very useful with a view to life in the world, 
for the more we have observed and known of men’s 
customs and circumstances, which are best revealed by 
their actions, the more warily we shall be able to order 
our lives among them, and so far as reason dictates to 
adapt our actions to their dispositions. 

III. We see that this natural Divine law does not 
demand the performance of ceremonies—that is, ac- 
tions in themselves indifferent, which are called good 
from the fact of their institution, or actions symbolizing 


78 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


something profitable for salvation, or (if one prefers 
this definition) actions of which the meaning surpasses 
human understanding. The natural light of reason 
does not demand anything which it Is itself unable to 
supply, but only such as it can very clearly show to be 
good, or a means to our blessedness. Such things as 
are good simply because they have been commanded 
or instituted, or as being symbols of something good, 
are mere shadows which cannot be reckoned among 
actions that are the offspring, as it were, or fruit of 
a sound mind and of intellect. There is no need for 
me to go into this now in more detail. 

IV. Lastly, we see that the highest reward of the 
Divine law is the law itself, namely, to know God and 
to love Him of our free choice, and with an undivided 
and fruitful spirit; while its penalty is the absence of 
these things, and being in bondage to the flesh—that 
is, having an inconstant and wavering spirit. 

These points being noted, I must now inquire 

I. Whether by the natural light of reason we can 
conceive of God as a law-giver or potentate ordaining 
laws for men? 

II. What is the teaching of Holy Writ concerning 
this natural light of reason and natural law? 

III. With what objects were ceremonies formerly 
instituted ? 

IV. Lastly, what is the good gained by knowing the 
sacred histories and believing them? 

Of the first two I will treat in this chapter, of the 
remaining two in the following one. 

Our conclusion about the first is easily deduced from 
the nature of God’s will, which is only distinguished 


OF THE DIVINE LAW Pee, 


from His understanding in relation to our intellect— 
that is, the will and the understanding of God are in 
reality one and the same, and are only distinguished 
in relation to our thoughts which we form concerning 
God’s understanding. For instance, if we are only 
looking to the fact that the nature of a triangle is 
from eternity contained in the Divine nature as an 
eternal verity, we say that God possesses the idea of 
a triangle, or that He understands the nature of a 
triangle; but if afterwards we look to the fact that the 
nature of a triargle is thus contained in the Divine 
nature, solely by the necessity of the Divine nature, 
and not by the necessity of the nature and essence of 
a triangle—in fact, that the necessity of a triangle’s 
essence and nature, in so far as they are conceived of 
as eternal verities, depends solely on the necessity of 
the Divine nature and intellect, we then style God’s 
will or decree, that which before we styled His intel- 
lect. Wherefore we make one and the same affirmation 
concerning God when we say that He has from eternity 
decreed that three angles of a triangle are equal to two 
right angles, as when we say that He has understood it. 

Hence the affirmations and the negations of God al- 
ways involve necessity or truth; so that, for example, 
if God said to Adam that He did not wish him to eat 
of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it would have 
involved a contradiction that Adam should have been 
able to eat of it, and would therefore have been impos- 
sible that he should have so eaten, for the Divine com- 
mand would have involved an eternal necessity and 
truth. But since Scripture nevertheless narrates that 
God did give this command to Adam, and yet that none 


80 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


the less Adam ate of the tree, we must perforce say 
that God revealed to Adam the evil which would surely 
follow if he should eat of the tree, but did not disclose 
that such evil would of necessity come to pass. Thus 
it was that Adam took the revelation to be not an 
eternal and necessary truth, but a law—that is, an 
ordinance followed by gain or loss, not depending 
necessarily on the nature of the act performed, but 
solely on the will and absolute power of some poten- 
tate, so that the revelation in question was solely in 
relation to Adam, and solely through his lack of knowl- 
edge a law, and God was, as it were, a lawgiver and 
potentate. From the same cause, namely, from lack 
of knowledge, the Decalogue in relation to the He- 
brews was a law, for since they knew not the existence 
of God as an eternal truth, they must have taken as a 
law that which was revealed to them in the Decalogue, 
namely, that God exists, and that God only should be 
worshiped. But if God had spoken to them without 
the intervention of any bodily means, immediately they 
would have perceived it not as a law but as an eternal 
truth. 

What we have said about the Israelites and Adam 
applies also to all the prophets who wrote laws in 
God’s name—they did not adequately conceive God’s 
decrees as eternal truths. For instance, we must say 
of Moses that from revelation, from the basis of what 
was revealed to him, he perceived the method by which 
the Israelitish nation could best be united in a par- 
ticular territory, and could form a body politic or state, 
and further that he perceived the method by which 
that nation could best be constrained to obedience; 


OF THE DIVINE LAW 81 


but he did not perceive, nor was it revealed to him, 
that this method was absolutely the best, nor that the 
obedience of the people in a certain strip of territory 
would necessarily imply the end he had in view. 
Wherefore he perceived these things not as eternal 
truths, but as precepts and ordinances, and he ordained 
them as laws of God, and thus it came to be that he 
conceived God as a ruler, a legislator, a king, as mer- 
ciful, just, etc., whereas such qualities are simply at- 
tributes of human nature, and utterly alien from the 
nature of the Deity. Thus much we may affirm of the 
prophets who wrote laws in the name of God; but we 
must not affirm it of Christ, for Christ, although He 
too seems to have written laws in the name of God, 
must be taken to have had a clear and adequate per- 
ception, for Christ was not so much a prophet as the 
mouthpiece of God. For God made revelations to man- 
kind through Christ as He had before done through 
angels—that is, a created voice, visions, etc. It would 
be as unreasonable to say that God had accommodated 
His revelations to the opinions of Christ as that He 
had before accommodated them to the opinions of 
angels (that is, of a created voice or visions) as mat- 
ters to be revealed to the prophets, a wholly absurd 
hypothesis. Moreover, Christ was sent to teach not 
only the Jews but the whole human race, and there- 
fore it was not enough that His mind should be ac- 
commodated to the opinions of the Jews alone, but also 
to the opinion and fundamental teaching common to 
the whole human race—in other words, to ideas uni- 
versal and true. Inasmuch as God revealed Himself to 
Christ, or to Christ’s mind immediately, and not as to 


82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


the prophets through words and symbols, we must 
needs suppose that Christ perceived truly what was 
revealed, in other words, He understood it, for a matter 
is understood when it is perceived simply by the mind 
without words or symbols. 

Christ, then, perceived (truly and adequately) 
what was revealed, and if He ever proclaimed such 
revelations as laws, He did so because of the ignorance 
and obstinacy of the people, acting in this respect the 
part of God; inasmuch as He accommodated Himself 
to the comprehension of the people, and though He 
spoke somewhat more clearly than the other prophets, 
yet He taught what was revealed obscurely, and gener- 
ally through parables, especially when He was speak- 
ing to those to whom it was not yet given to under- 
stand the kingdom of heaven. (See Matt. xiii, 10, etc.) 
To those to whom it was given to understand the mys- 
teries of heaven, He doubtless taught His doctrines 
as eternal truths and did not lay them down as laws, 
thus freeing the minds of His hearers from the bond- 
age of that law which He further confirmed and estab- 
lished. Paul apparently points to this more than once 
(e.g., Rom. vii. 6, and ili. 28), though he never himself 
seems to wish to speak openly, but, to quote his own 
words (Rom. ill. 5, and vi. 19), ‘“‘merely humanly.” 
This he expressly states when he calls God just, and 
it was doubtless in concession to human weakness that 
he attributes mercy, grace, anger, and similar qualities 
to God, adapting his language to the popular mind, or, 
as he puts it (1 Cor. ill. 1, 2), to carnal men. In Rom. 
ix. 18, he teaches undisguisedly that God’s anger and 
mercy depend not on the actions of men, but on God’s 


OF THE DIVINE LAW 83 


own nature or will; further, that no one is justified by 
the works of the law, but only by faith, which he seems 
to identify with the full assent of the soul; lastly, that 
no one is blessed unless he have in him the mind of 
Christ (Rom. viii. 9), whereby he perceives the laws 
of God as eternal truths. We conclude, therefore, that 
God is described as a lawgiver or prince, and styled 
just, merciful, etc., merely in concession to popular 
understanding, and the imperfection of popular 
knowledge; that in reality God acts and directs all 
things simply by the necessity of His nature and per- 
fection, and that His decrees and volitions are eternal 
truths, and always involve necessity. So much for 
the first point which I wished to explain and demon- 
strate. 

Passing on to the second point, let us search the 
sacred pages for their teaching concerning the light 
of nature and this Divine law. The first doctrine we 
find in the history of the first man, where it is narrated 
that God commanded Adam not to eat of the fruit of 
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; this seems 
to mean that God commanded Adam to do and to seek 
after righteousness because it was good, not because 
the contrary was evil: that is, to seek the good for its 
own sake, not from fear of evil. We have seen that he 
who acts rightly from the true knowledge and love 
of right, acts with freedom and constancy, whereas he 
who acts from fear of evil, is under the constraint of 
evil, and acts in bondage under external control. So 
that this commandment of God to Adam comprehends 
the whole Divine natural law, and absolutely agrees 
with the dictates of the light of nature; nay, it would 


84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


be easy to explain on this basis the whole history or 
allegory of the first man. But I refer to pass over the 
subject in silence, because, in the first place, I cannot 
be absolutely certain that my explanation would be in 
accordance with the intention of the sacred writer; 
and, secondly, because many do not admit that this 
history is an allegory, maintaining it to be a simple 
narrative of facts. It will be better, therefore, to 
adduce other passages of Scripture, especially such as 
were written by him, who speaks with all the strength 
of his natural understanding, in which he surpassed 
all his contemporaries, and whose sayings are accepted 
by the people as of equal right with those of the proph- 
ets. I mean Solomon, whose prudence and wisdom 
are commended in Scripture rather than his piety and 
gift of prophecy. He, in his proverbs, calls the human 
intellect the well-spring of true life, and declares that 
misfortune is made up of folly. ‘Understanding is a 
well-spring of life to him that hath it; but the instruc- 
tion of fools is folly” (Prov. xvi. 22). Life being taken 
to mean the true life (as is evident from Deut. xxx, 19), 
the fruit of the understanding consists only in the 
true life, and its absence constitutes punishment. All 
this absolutely agrees with what was set out in our 
fourth point concerning natural law. Moreover, our 
position that it is the well-spring of life, and that the 
intellect alone lays down laws for the wise, is plainly 
taught by the sage, for he says (Prov. xiii. 14): “The 
law of the wise is a fountain of life’—that is, as we 
gather from the preceding text, the understanding. In 
chap. iii. 13, he expressly teaches that the understand- 
ing renders man blessed and happy, and gives him true 


OF THE DIVINE LAW 85 


peace of mind. “Happy is the man that findeth wis- 
dom, and the man that getteth understanding,” for 
“Wisdom gives length of days, and riches and honour; 
her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths 
peace” (xiii. 16, 17). According to Solomon, there- 
fore, it is only the wise who live in peace and equa- 
nimity, not like the wicked whose minds drift hither 
and thither, and (as Isaiah says, chap. lvii. 20) “are 
like the troubled sea, for them there is no peace.” 
Lastly, we should especially note the passage in 
chap. ii. of Solomon’s proverbs which most clearly 
confirms our contention: “If thou criest after knowl- 
edge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding . . . 
then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and 
find the knowledge of God; for the Lord giveth wis- 
dom; out of His mouth cometh knowledge and under- 
standing.” These words clearly enunciate (1), that 
wisdom or intellect alone teaches us to fear God wisely 
—that is, to worship Him truly; (2), that wisdom and 
knowledge flow from God’s mouth, and that God be- 
stows on us this gift; this we have already shown in 
proving that our understanding and our knowledge 
depend on, spring from, and are perfected by the idea 
or knowledge of God, and nothing else. Solomon goes 
on to say in so many words that this knowledge con- 
tains and involves the true principles of ethics and 
politics: ‘““When wisdom entereth into thy heart, and 
knowledge is pleasant to thy soul, discretion shall pre- 
serve thee, understanding shall keep thee, then shalt 
thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and 
equity, yea every good path.” All of which is in ob- 
vious agreement with natural knowledge: for after we 


86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


have come to the understanding of things, and have 
tasted the excellence of knowledge, she teaches us 
ethics and true virtue. 

Thus the happiness and the peace of him who culti- 
vates his natural understanding lies, according to Solo- 
mon also, not so much under the dominion of fortune 
(or God’s external aid) as in inward personal virtue 
(or God’s internal aid), for the latter can to a great 
extent be preserved by vigilance, right action, and 
thought. | 

Lastly, we must by no means pass over the passage 
in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (i. 20), in which he 
says: ‘For the invisible things of God from the creation 
of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the 
things that are made, even His eternal power and 
Godhead; so that they are without excuse, because, 
when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, 
neither were they thankful.” These words clearly show 
that every one can by the light of nature clearly under- 
stand the goodness and the eternal divinity of God, and 
can thence know and deduce what they should seek for 
and what avoid; wherefore the Apostle says that they 
are without excuse and cannot plead ignorance, as they 
certainly might if it were a question of supernatural 
light and the incarnation, passion, resurrection of 
Christ. ‘Wherefore,’ he goes on to say (#b. 24), 
“God gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts 
of their own hearts;” and so on, through the rest of 
the chapter, he describes the vices of ignorance, and 
sets them forth as the punishment of ignorance. This 
obviously agrees with the verse of Solomon, already 
quoted, “The instruction of fools is folly,” so that it 





OF THE DIVINE LAW 87 


is easy to understand why Paul says that the wicked 
are without excuse. As every man sows so shall he 
reap: out of evil, evils necessarily spring, unless they 
be wisely counteracted. 

Thus we see that Scripture literally approves of the 
light of natural reason and the natural Divine law, 
and I have fulfilled the promises made at the begin- 
ning of this chapter. 


CHAPTER VI 


OF THE CEREMONIAL LAW* 


In the foregoing chapter we have shown that the 
Divine law, which renders men truly blessed, and 
teaches them the true life, is universal to all men; nay, 
we have so intimately deduced it from human nature 
that it must be esteemed innate, and, as it were, in- 
grained in the human mind. 

But with regard to the ceremonial observances which 
were ordained in the Old Testament for the Hebrews 
only, and were so adapted to their state that they 
could for the most part only be observed by the society 
as a whole and not by each individual, it is evident that 
they formed no part of the Divine law, and had noth- 
ing to do with blessedness and virtue, but had refer- 
ence only to the election of the Hebrews, that is (as 
I have shown in Chapter IV), to their temporal bodily 
happiness and the tranquillity of their kingdom, and 
that therefore they were only valid while that kingdom 
lasted. If in the Old Testament they are spoken of as 
the law of God, it is only because they were founded 
on revelation, or a basis of revelation. Still as reason, 
however sound, has little weight with ordinary theolo- 
gians, I will adduce the authority of Scripture for what 
I here assert, and will further show, for the sake of 


1From the Tr. Th.-P., ch. v, same title. 
88 





OF THE CEREMONIAL LAW 89 


greater clearness, why and how these ceremonials served 
to establish and preserve the Jewish kingdom. Isaiah 
teaches most plainly that the Divine law in its strict 
sense signifies that universal law which consists in a 
true manner of life, and does not signify ceremonial 
observances. In chapter i., verse 10, the prophet calls 
on. his countrymen to hearken to the Divine law as he 
delivers it, and first excluding all kinds of sacrifices 
and all feasts, he at length sums up the law in these 
few words: “Cease to do evil, learn to do well: seek 
judgment, relieve the oppressed.” Not less striking 
testimony is given in Psalm xl. 7-9, where the Psalmist 
addresses God: “Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not 
desire; mine ears hast Thou opened; burnt offering 
and sin-offering hast Thou not required; I delight to 
do Thy will, O my God; yea, Thy law is within my 
heart.”’ Here the Psalmist reckons as the law of God 
only that which is inscribed in his heart, and excludes 
ceremonies therefrom, for the latter are good and in- 
scribed on the heart only from the fact of their insti- 
tution, and not because of their intrinsic value. 

Other passages of Scripture testify to the same truth, 
but these two will suffice. We may also learn from the 
Bible that ceremonies are no aid to blessedness, but 
only have reference to the temporal prosperity of the 
kingdom; for the rewards promised for their ob- 
servance are merely temporal advantages and delights, 
blessedness being reserved for the universal Divine 
law. In all the five books commonly attributed to 
Moses nothing is promised, as I have said, beyond 
temporal benefits, such as honors, fame, victories, 

riches, enjoyments, and health. Though many moral 


90 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


precepts besides ceremonies are contained in these 
five books, they appear not as moral doctrines uni- 
versal to all men, but as commands especially adapted 
to the understanding and character of the Hebrew 
people, and as having reference only to the welfare of 
the kingdom. For instance, Moses does not teach the 
Jews as a prophet not to kill or to steal, but gives these 
commandments solely as a lawgiver and judge; he does 
not reason out the doctrine, but affixes for its non- 
observance a penalty which may and very properly 
does vary in different nations. So, too, the command 
not to commit adultery is given merely with reference 
to the welfare of the state; for if the moral doctrine 
had been intended, with reference not only to the wel- 
fare of the state, but also to the tranquillity and blessed- 
ness of the individual, Moses would have condemned 
not merely the outward act, but also the mental ac- 
quiescence, as is done by Christ, Who taught only uni- 
versal moral precepts, and for this cause promises a 
spiritual instead of a temporal reward. Christ, as I 
have said, was sent into the world, not to preserve the 
state nor to lay down laws, but solely to teach the uni- 
versal moral law, so we can easily understand that He 
wished in no wise to do away with the law of Moses, 
inasmuch as He introduced no new laws of His own— 
His sole care was to teach moral doctrines, and dis- 
tinguish them from the laws of the state; for the 
Pharisees, in their ignorance, thought that the ob- 
servance of the state law and the Mosaic law was the 
sum total of morality; whereas such laws merely had 
reference to the public welfare, and aimed not so much 
at instructing the Jews as at keeping them under con- 


OF THE CEREMONIAL LAW 9f 


straint. But let us return to our subject, and cite other 
passages of Scripture which set forth temporal bene- 
fits as rewards for observing the ceremonial law, and 
blessedness as reward for the universal law. 

None of the prophets puts the point more clearly 
than Isaiah. After condemning hypocrisy, he com- 
mends liberty and charity towards oneself and one’s 
neighbors, and promises as a reward: ‘Then shall thy 
light break forth as the morning, and thy health shall 
spring forth speedily, thy righteousness shall go before 
thee, and the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward” 
(chap. Iviii. 8). Shortly afterwards he commends the 
Sabbath, and for a due observance of it promises: 
“Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord, and I 
will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the 
earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy 
father: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.” 
Thus the prophet, for liberty bestowed and charitable 
works, promises a healthy mind in a healthy body, and 
the glory of the Lord even after death; whereas, for 
ceremonial exactitude, he only promises security of 
rule, prosperity, and temporal happiness. 

. . . It remains to show why and how the ceremonial 
observances tended to preserve and confirm the Hebrew 
kingdom; and this I can very briefly do on grounds 
universally accepted. 

The formation of society serves not only for de- 
fensive purposes, but is also very useful, and, indeed, 
absolutely necessary, as rendering possible the division 
of labor. If men did not render mutual assistance te 
each other, no one would have either the skill or the 
time to provide for his own sustenance and preserva- 


92 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


tion: for all men are not equally apt for all work, and 
no one would be capable of preparing all that he indi- 
vidually stood in need of. Strength and time, I repeat, 
would fail, if every one had in person to plow, to sow, 
to reap, to grind corn, to cook, to weave, to stitch and 
perform the other numerous functions required to keep 
life going; to say nothing of the arts and sciences which 
are also entirely necessary to the perfection and 
blessedness of human nature. We see that peoples 
living in uncivilized barbarism lead a wretched and 
almost animal life, and even they would not be able 
to acquire their few rude necessaries without assisting 
one another to a certain extent. 

Now if men were so constituted by nature that they 
desired nothing but what is designated by true reason, 
society would obviously have no need of laws: it would 
be sufficient to inculcate true moral doctrines; and men 
would freely, without hesitation, act in accordance 
with their true interests. But human nature is framed 
in a different fashion: every one, indeed, seeks his own 
interest, but does not do so in accordance with the dic- 
tates of sound reason, for most men’s ideas of desir- 
ability and usefulness are guided by their fleshly in- 
stincts and emotions, which take no thought beyond 
the present and the immediate object. Therefore, no 
society can exist without government, and force, and 
laws to restrain and repress men’s desires and im- 
moderate impulses. Still human nature will not sub- 
mit to absolute repression. Violent governments, as 
Seneca says, never last long; the moderate govern- 
ments endure. 

So long as men act simply from fear they act con- 


OF THE CEREMONIAL LAW 93 


trary to their inclinations, taking no thought for the 
advantages or necessity of their actions, but simply 
endeavoring to escape punishment or loss of life. They 
must needs rejoice in any evil which befalls their ruler, 
even if it should involve themselves; and must long 
for and bring about such evil by every means in their 
power. Again, men are especially intolerant of serv- 
ing and being ruled by their equals. Lastly, it is ex- 
ceedingly difficult to revoke liberties once granted. 

From these considerations it follows, firstly, that 
authority should either be vested in the hands of the 
whole state in common, so that every one should be 
bound to serve, and yet not be in subjection to his 
equals; or else, if power be in the hands of a few, or 
one man, that one man should be something above 
average humanity, or should strive to get himself ac- 
cepted as such. Secondly, laws should in every govern- 
ment be so arranged that people should be kept in 
bounds by the hope of some greatly desired good, 
rather than by fear, for then every one will do his 
duty willingly. 

Lastly, as obedience consists in acting at the bidding 
of external authority, it would have no place in a state 
where the government is vested in the whole people, 
and where laws are made by common consent. In 
such a society the people would remain free, whether 
the laws were added to or diminished, inasmuch as it 
would not be done on external authority, but their own 
free consent. The reverse happens when the sovereign 
power is vested in one man, for all act at his bidding; 
and, therefore, unless they had been trained from the 
first to depend on the words of their ruler, the latter 


94 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


would find it difficult, in case of need, to abrogate liber- 
ties once conceded, and impose new laws. 

From these universal considerations, let us pass on 
to the kingdom of the Jews. The Jews when they 
first came out of Egypt were not bound by any national 
laws, and were therefore free to ratify any laws they 
liked, or to make new ones, and were at liberty to set 
up a government and occupy a territory wherever they 
chose. However, they were entirely unfit to frame a 
wise code of laws and to keep the sovereign power 
vested in the community; they were all uncultivated 
and sunk in a wretched slavery, therefore the sov- 
ereignty was bound to remain vested in the hands of 
one man who would rule the rest and keep them under 
constraint, make laws and interpret them. This 
sovereignty was easily retained by Moses, because he 
surpassed the rest in virtue and persuaded the people 
of the fact, proving it by many testimonies (see Exod. 
chap. xiv., last verse, and chap. xIx., verse 9). He 
then, by the Divine virtue he possessed, made laws and 
ordained them for the people, taking the greatest care 
that they should be obeyed willingly and not through 
fear, being specially induced to adopt this course by 
the obstinate nature of the Jews, who would not have 
submitted to be ruled solely by constraint; and also 
by the imminence of war, for it is always better to in- 
spire soldiers with a thirst for glory than to terrify them 
with threats; each man will then strive to distinguish 
himself by valor and courage, instead of merely trying 
to escape punishment. Moses, therefore, by his virtue 
and the Divine command, introduced a religion so that 
the people might do their duty from devotion rather 


OF THE CEREMONIAL LAW 95 


than fear. Further, he bound them over by benefits, 
and prophesied many advantages in the future; nor 
were his laws very severe, as any one may see for him- 
self, especially if he remarks the number of circum- 
stances necessary in order to procure the conviction of 
an accused person. 

Lastly, in order that the people which could not 
govern itself should be entirely dependent on its ruler, 
he left nothing to the free choice of individuals (who 
had hitherto been slaves); the people could do nothing 
but remember the law, and follow the ordinances laid 
down at the good pleasure of their ruler; they were 
not allowed to plow, to sow, to reap, nor even to eat; 
to clothe themselves, to shave, to rejoice, or, in fact, to 
do anything whatever as they liked, but were bound 
to follow the directions given in the law; and not only 
this, but they were obliged to have marks on their 
doorposts, on their hands, and between their eyes to 
admonish them to perpetual obedience. 

This, then, was the object of the ceremonial law, that 
men should do nothing of their own free will, but should 
always act under external authority, and should con- 
tinually confess by their actions and thoughts that 
they were not their own masters, but were entirely 
under the control of others. 

From all these considerations it is clearer than day 
that ceremonies have nothing to do with a state of 
blessedness, and that those mentioned in the Old Testa- 
ment, z.e., the whole Mosaic Law, had reference merely 
to the government of the Jews, and merely temporal 
advantages. 

As for the Christian rites, such as baptism, the Lord’s 


96 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


Supper, festivals, public prayers, and any other ob- 
servances which are, and always have been, common 
to all Christendom, if they were instituted by Christ 
or His Apostles (which is open to doubt), they were in- 
stituted as external signs of the universal church, and 
not as having anything to do with blessedness, or pos- 
sessing any sanctity in themselves. Therefore, though 
such ceremonies were not ordained for the sake of up- 
holding a government, they were ordained for the 
preservation of a society, and accordingly he who lives 
alone is not bound by them: nay, those who live in a 
country where the Christian religion is forbidden, are 
bound to abstain from such rites, and can none the less 
live in a state of blessedness. We have an example of 
this in Japan, where the Christian religion is forbid- 
den, and the Dutch who live there are enjoined by their 
East India Company not to practice any outward rites 
of religion. I need not cite other examples, though it 
would be easy to prove my point from the fundamental 
principles of the New Testament, and to adduce many 
confirmatory instances; but I pass on the more will- 
ingly, as I am anxious to proceed to my next proposi- 
tion. I will now, therefore, pass on to what I proposed 
to treat of in the second part of this chapter, namely, 
what persons are bound to believe in the narratives con- 
tained in Scripture, and how far they are so bound. 
Examining this question by the aid of natural reason, I 
will proceed as follows: 

If any one wishes to persuade his fellows for or 
against anything which is not self-evident, he must 
deduce his contention from their admissions, and con- 
vince them either by experience or by ratiocination; 


OF THE CEREMONIAL LAW 97 


either by appealing to facts of natural experience, or 
to self-evident intellectual axioms. Now unless the 
experience be of such a kind as to be clearly and dis- 
tinctly understood, though it may convince a man, it 
will not have the same effect on his mind and disperse 
the clouds of his doubt so completely as when the doc- 
trine taught is deduced entirely from intellectual axioms 
—that is, by the mere power of the understanding and 
logical order, and this is especially the case in spiritual 
matters which have nothing to do with the senses. 

But the deduction of conclusions from general truths 
ad priori, usually requires a long chain of arguments, 
and, moreover, very great caution, acuteness, and self- 
restraint—qualities which are not often met with; 
therefore people prefer to be taught by experience 
rather than deduce their conclusion from a few axioms, 
and set them out in logical order. Whence it follows, 
that if any one wishes to teach a doctrine to a whole 
nation (not to speak of the whole human race), and to 
be understood by all men in every particular, he will 
seek to support his teaching with experience, and will 
endeavor to suit his reasonings and the definitions of 
his doctrines as far as possible to the understanding of 
the common people, who form the majority of mankind, 
and he will not set them forth in logical sequence nor 
adduce the definitions which serve to establish them. 
Otherwise he writes only for the learned—that is, he 
will be understood by only a small proportion of the 
human race. 

All Scripture was written primarily for an entire 
people, and secondarily for the whole human race; 
therefore its contents must necessarily be adapted as 


98 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


far as possible to the understanding of the masses, and 
proved only by examples drawn from experience. We 
will explain ourselves more clearly. The chief specula- 
tive doctrines taught in Scripture are the existence of 
God, or a Being Who made all things, and Who directs 
and sustains the world with consummate wisdom; fur- 
thermore, that God takes the greatest thought for men, 
or such of them as live piously and honorably, while 
He punishes, with various penalties, those who do evil, 
separating them from the good. All this is proved in 
Scripture entirely through experience—that is, through 
the narratives there related. No definitions of doctrine 
are given, but all the sayings and reasonings are 
adapted to the understanding of the masses. Although 
experience can give no clear knowledge of these things, 
nor explain the nature of God, nor how He directs and 
sustains all things, it can nevertheless teach and en- 
lighten men sufficiently to impress obedience and devo- 
tion on their minds. 

It is not, I think, sufficiently clear what persons are 
bound to believe in the Scripture narratives, and in 
what degree they are so bound, for it evidently follows 
from what has been said that the knowledge of and 
belief in them is particularly necessary to the masses 
whose intellect is not capable of perceiving things 
clearly and distinctly. Further, he who denies them 
because he does not believe that God exists or takes 
thought for men and the world, may be accounted im- 
pious; but a man who is ignorant of them, and never- 
theless shows by natural reason that God exists, as 
we have said, and has a true plan of life, is altogether 
blessed—yes, more blessed than the common herd of 


OF THE CEREMONIAL LAW ao 


believers, because besides true opinions he possesses 
also a true and distinct conception. Lastly, he who is 
ignorant of the Scriptures and knows nothing by the 
light of reason, though he may not be impious or rebel- 
lious, is yet less than human and almost brutal, having 
none of God’s gifts. 

We must here remark that when we say that the 
knowledge of the sacred narrative is particularly neces- 
sary to the masses, we do not mean the knowledge of 
absolutely all the narratives in the Bible, but only of 
the principal ones, those which, taken by themselves, 
plainly display the doctrine we have just stated, and 
have most effect over men’s minds. 

If all the narratives in Scripture were necessary for 
the proof of this doctrine, and if no conclusion could be 
drawn without the general consideration of every one 
of the histories contained in the sacred writings, truly 
the conclusion and demonstration of such doctrine 
would overtask the understanding and strength not only 
of the masses, but of humanity; who is there who could 
give attention to all the narratives at once, and to all 
the circumstances, and all the scraps of doctrine to be 
elicited from such a host of diverse histories? I cannot 
believe that the men who have left us the Bible as we 
have it were so abounding in talent that they attempted 
setting about such a method of demonstration, still less 
can I suppose that we cannot understand Scriptural 
doctrine till we have given heed to the quarrels of 
Isaac, the advice of Achitophel to Absalom, the civil 
war between Jews and Israelites, and other similar 
chronicles; nor can I think that it was more difficult 
to teach such doctrine by means of history to the Jews 


100 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


of early times, the contemporaries of Moses, than it was 
to the contemporaries of Esdras. But more will be 
said on this point hereafter, we may now only note 
that the masses are only bound to know those histories 
which can most powerfully dispose their mind to obe- 
dience and devotion. However, the masses are not 
sufficiently skilled to draw conclusions from what they 
read, they take more delight in the actual stories, and 
tn the strange and unlooked-for issues of events than in 
the doctrines implied; therefore, besides reading these 
narratives, they are always in need of pastors or church 
ministers to explain them to their feeble intelligence. 

But not to wander from our point, let us conclude 
with what has been our principal object—namely, that 
the truth of narratives, be they what they may, has 
nothing to do with the Divine law, and serves for 
nothing except in respect of doctrine, the sole element 
which makes one history better than another. The 
narratives in the Old and New Testaments surpass 
profane history, and differ among themselves in merit 
simply by reason of the salutary doctrines which they 
inculcate. Therefore, if a man were to read the 
Scripture narratives believing the whole of them, but 
were to give no heed to the doctrines they contain, and 
make no amendment in his life, he might employ him- 
self just as profitably in reading the Koran or the poetic 
drama, or ordinary chronicles, with the attention 
usually given to such writings; on the other hand, if 
a man is absolutely ignorant of the Scriptures, and none 
the less has right opinions and a true plan of life, he 
is absolutely blessed and truly possesses in himself the 
spirit of Christ. 





OF THE CEREMONIAL LAW 101 


The Jews are of a directly contrary way of thinking, 
for they hold that true opinions and a true plan of life 
are of no service in attaining blessedness, if their pos- 
sessors have arrived at them by the light of reason 
only, and not like the documents prophetically revealed, 
to Moses. Maimonides ventures openly to make this 
assertion: “Every man who takes to heart the seven 
precepts and diligently follows them, is counted with 
the pious among the nations, and an heir of the world 
to come; that is to say, if he takes to heart and fol- 
lows them because God ordained them in the law, and 
revealed them to us by Moses, because they were of 
aforetime precepts to the sons of Noah: but he who 
follows them as lead thereto by reason, is not counted 
as a dweller among the pious, nor among the wise of 
the nations.”’” Such are the words of Maimonides, to 
which R. Joseph, the son of Shem Job, adds in his 
book, which he calls Kebod Elohim, or God’s Glory, 
that although Aristotle (whom he considers to have 
written the best ethics and to be above every one else) 
has not omitted anything that concerns true ethics, and 
which he has adopted in his own book, carefully fol- 
lowing the lines laid down, yet this was not able to 
suffice for his salvation, inasmuch as he embraced his 
doctrines in accordance with the dictates of reason and 
not as Divine documents prophetically revealed. 

However, that these are mere figments and are not 
supported by Scriptural authority will, I think, be 
sufficiently evident to the attentive reader, so that an 


1 The Jews were not, of course, alone in holding this point of view. 
Dante consigned the ancient philosophers—including Aristotle—and 
even Vergil to Limbo, agreeing thus in doctrine with Maimonides 
and R. Joseph, the son of Shem Job.—Ep. 


102 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


examination of the theory will be sufficient for its 
refutation. It is not my purpose here to refute the 
assertions of those who assert that the natural light 
of reason can teach nothing of any value concerning 
the true way of salvation. People who lay no claims 
to reason for themselves are not able to prove by reason 
this their assertion; and if they hawk about something 
superior to reason, it is a mere figment, and far below 
reason, as their general method of life sufficiently 
shows. But there is no need to dwell upon such per- 
sons. I will merely add that we can only judge of a 
man by his works. If a man abounds in the fruits of 
the Spirit, charity, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, 
goodness, faith, gentleness, chastity, against which, as 
Paul says (Gal. v. 22), there is no law, such an one, 
whether he be taught by reason only or by the Scrip- 
ture only, has been in very truth taught by God, and 
is altogether blessed. Thus have I said all that I 
undertook to say concerning Divine law. 





CHAPTER VII 
OF MIRACLES. * 


As men are accustomed to call Divine the knowledge 
which transcends human understanding, so also do 
they style Divine, or the work of God, anything of 
which the cause is not generally known: for the 
masses think that the power and providence of God 
are most clearly displayed by events that are extraor- 
dinary and contrary to the conception they have formed 
of Nature, especially if such events bring them any 
profit or convenience: they think that the clearest 
possible proof of God’s existence is afforded when 
Nature, as they suppose, breaks her accustomed order, 
and consequently they believe that those who explain 
or endeavor to understand phenomena or miracles 
through their natural causes are doing away with God 
and His providence. They suppose, forsooth, that 
God is inactive so long as Nature works in her ac- 
customed order, and vice versa, that the power of 
Nature and natural causes are idle so long as God is 
acting: thus they imagine two powers distinct one 
from the other, the power of God and the power of 
Nature, though the latter is in a sense determined by 
God, or (as most people believe now) created by Him. 
What they mean by either, and what they understand 


1From the Tr, Th.-P., ch. vi, same title. 
; 103 


104 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


by God and Nature they do not know, except that they 
imagine the power of God to be like that of some royal 
potentate, and Nature’s power to consist in force and 
energy. 

The masses then style unusual phenomena “mira- 
cles,” and partly from piety, partly for the sake of 
opposing the students of science, prefer to remain in 
ignorance of natural causes, and only to hear of those 
things which they know least, and consequently admire 
most. In fact, the common people can only adore 
God, and refer all things to His power by removing 
natural causes, and conceiving things happening out 
of their due course, and only admires the power of 
God when the power of Nature is conceived of as in sub- 
jection to it. 

This idea seems to have taken its rise among the 
early Jews who saw the Gentiles round them worship- 
ing visible gods, such as the sun, the moon, the earth, 
water, air, etc., and in order to inspire the conviction 
that such divinities were weak and inconstant, or 
changeable, told how they themselves were under the 
sway of an invisible God, and narrated their miracles, 
trying further to show that the God whom they wor- 
shiped arranged the whole of nature for their sole 
benefit. This idea was so pleasing to humanity that 
men go on to this day imagining miracles, so that they 
may believe themselves God’s favorites and the final 
cause for which God created and directs all things. 

What pretensions will not people in their folly ad- 
vance! Thev have no single sound idea concerning 
either God or Nature, they confound God’s decrees with 
human decrees, they conceive Nature as so limited that 


OF MIRACLES 105 


they believe man to be its chief part! I have spent 
enough space in setting forth these common ideas and 
prejudices concerning Nature and miracles, but in 
order to afford a regular demonstration I will show: 

1. That Nature cannot be contravened, but that she 
preserves a fixed and immutable order, and at the 
same time I will explain what is meant by a miracle. 

2. That God’s nature and existence, and conse- 
quently His providence, cannot be known from mira- 
cles, but that they can all be much better perceived 
from the fixed and immutable order of Nature. 

3. That by the decrees and volitiors, and conse- 
quently the providence of God, Scripture (as I will 
prove by Scriptural examples) means nothing but Na- 
ture’s order following necessarily from her eternal 
laws. 

4. Lastly, I will treat of the method of inter- 
preting Scriptural miracles, and the chief points to be 
noted concerning the narratives of them. 

Such are the principal subjects which will be dis- 
cussed in this chapter, and which will serve, I think, 
not a little to further the object of this treatise. 

Our first point is easily proved from what we showed 
in Chapter V about Divine law—namely, that all that 
God wishes or determines involves eternal necessity 
and truth, for we demonstrated that God’s understand- 
ing is identical with His will, and that it is the same 
thing to say that God wills a thing, as to say that He 
understands it; hence, as it follows necessarily from 
the Divine nature and perfection that God under: 
stands a thing as it is, it follows no less necessarily 
that He wills it as it is. Now, as nothing is necessarily 


106 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


true save only by Divine decree, it is plain that the 
universal laws of Nature are decrees of God following 
from the necessity and perfection of the Divine nature. 
Hence, any event happening in nature which contra- 
vened Nature’s universal laws, would necessarily also 
contravene the Divine decree, nature, and understand- 
ing; or if any one asserted that God acts in contra- 
vention to the laws of Nature, he, zpso facto, would be 
compelled to assert that God acted against His own 
nature—an evident absurdity. One might easily show 
from the same premises that the power and efficiency of 
Nature are in themselves the Divine power and effi- 
ciency, and that the Divine power is the very essence 
of God, but this I gladly pass over for the present. 
Nothing, then, comes to pass in Nature* in con- 
travention to her universal laws, nay, everything 
agrees with them and follows from them, for what- 
soever comes to pass, comes to pass by the will and 
eternal decree of God; that is, as we have just pointed 
out, whatever comes to pass, comes to pass according 
to laws and rules which involve eternal necessity and 
truth; Nature, therefore, always observes laws and rules 
which involve eternal necessity and truth, although they 
may not all be known to us, and therefore she keeps 
a fixed and immutable order. Nor is there any sound 
reason for limiting the power and efficacy of Nature, 
and asserting that her laws are fit for certain pur- 
poses, but not for all; for as the efficacy and power 
of Nature are the very efficacy and power of God, and 
as the laws and rules of Nature are the decrees of 


1N.B. I do not mean here by “Nature,” merely matter and its 
modifications, but infinite other things besides matter. 


OF MIRACLES 107 


God, it is in every way to be believed that the power 
of Nature is infinite, and that her laws are broad 
enough to embrace everything conceived by the Di- 
vine intellect. The only alternative is to assert that 
God has created Nature so weak, and has ordained 
for her laws so barren, that He is repeatedly com- 
pelled to come afresh to her aid if He wishes that 
she should be preserved, and that things should happen 
as He desires: a conclusion, in my opinion, very far 
removed from reason. Further, as nothing happens 
in Nature which does not follow from her laws, and 
as her laws embrace everything conceived’ by the 
Divine intellect, and, lastly, as Nature preserves a fixed 
and immutable order, it most clearly follows that 
miracles are only intelligible as in relation to human 
opinions, and merely mean events of which the natu- 
ral cause cannot be explained by a reference to any 
ordinary occurrence, either by us, or at any rate by 
the writer and narrator of the miracle. 

We may, in fact, say that a miracle is an event of 
which the causes cannot be explained by the natural 
reason through a reference to ascertained workings 
of Nature; but since miracles were wrought according 
to the understanding of the masses, who are wholly 
ignorant of the workings of Nature, it is certain that 
the ancients took for a miracle whatever they could 
not explain by the method adopted by the unlearned in 
such cases, namely, an appeal to the memory, a recall- 
ing of something similar, which is ordinarily regarded 
without wonder; for most people think they sufficiently 
understand a thing when they have ceased to wonder 
at it. The ancients, then, and indeed most men up ta 


108 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


the present day, had no other criterion for a miracle; 
hence we cannot doubt that many things are narrated 
in Scripture as miracles of which the causes could 
easily be explained by reference to ascertained work- 
ings of Nature. We have hinted as much in Chapter 
III, in speaking of the sun standing still in the time of 
Joshua, and going backwards in the time of Ahaz; but 
we shall soon have more to say on the subject when 
we come to treat of the interpretation of miracles later 
on in this chapter. 

It is now time to pass on to the second point, and 
show that we cannot gain an understanding of God’s 
essence, existence, or providence by means of miracles, 
but that these truths are much better perceived through 
the fixed and immutable order of Nature. 

I thus proceed with the demonstration. As God’s ex- 
istence is not self-evident, it must necessarily be 
inferred from ideas so firmly and incontrovertibly true 
that no power can be postulated or conceived sufficient 
to impugn them. They ought certainly so to appear 
to us when we infer from them God’s existence, if we 
wish to place our conclusion beyond the reach of 
doubt; for if we could conceive that such ideas could 
be impugned by any power whatsoever, we should doubt 
of their truth, we should doubt of our conclusion, 
namely, of God’s existence, and should never be able 
to be certain of anything. Further, we know that noth- 
ing either agrees with or is contrary to Nature, unless 
it agrees with or is contrary to these primary ideas; 
wherefore if we would conceive that anything could be 
done in Nature by any power whatsoever which would 
be contrary to the laws of Nature, it would also be 


OF MIRACLES 109 


contrary to our primary ideas, and we should have 
either to reject it as absurd, or else to cast doubt (as 
just shown) on our primary ideas, and consequently 
on the existence of God, and on everything howsoever 
perceived. Therefore miracles, in the sense of events 
contrary to the laws of Nature, so far from demonstrat- 
ing to us the existence of God, would, on the contrary, 
lead us to doubt it, where, otherwise, we might have 
been absolutely certain of it, as knowing that Nature 
follows a fixed and immutable order. 

Let us take miracle as meaning that which cannot be 
explained through natural causes. This may be inter- 
preted in two senses: either as that which has natural 
causes, but cannot be examined by the human intellect; 
or as that which has no cause save God and God’s will. 
But as all things which come to pass through natural 
causes come to pass also solely through the will and 
power of God, it comes to this: that a miracle, whether 
it has natural causes or not, is a result which cannot be 
explained by its cause, that is a phenomenon which 
surpasses human understanding; but from such a phe- 
nomenon, and certainly from a result surpassing our 
understanding, we can gain no knowledge. For what- 
soever we understand clearly and distinctly should be 
plain to us either in itself or by means of something 
else clearly and distinctly understood; wherefore from 
a miracle or a phenomenon which we cannot under- 
stand we can gain no knowledge of God’s essence, or 
existence, or indeed anything about God or nature; 
whereas when we know that all things are ordained and 
ratified by God, that the operations of Nature follow 
from the essence of God, and that the laws of Nature 


110 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


are eternal decrees and volitions of God, we must per- 
force conclude that our knowledge of God and of God’s 
will increases in proportion to our knowledge and clear 
understanding of Nature, as we see how she depends on 
her primal cause, and how she works according to eter- 
nal law. Wherefore so far as our understanding goes, 
those phenomena which we clearly and distinctly 
understand have much better right to be called works 
of God, and to be referred to the will of God than 
those about which we are entirely ignorant, although 
they appeal powerfully to the imagination, and compel 
men’s admiration. 

It is only phenomena that we clearly and distinctly 
understand which heighten our knowledge of God and 
most clearly indicate His will and decrees. Plainly, 
they are but triflers who, when they cannot explain a 
thing, run back to the will of God; this is, truly, a 
ridiculous way of expressing ignorance. Again, even 
supposing that some conclusion could be drawn from 
miracles, we could not possibly infer from them the 
existence of God; for a miracle being an event under 
limitations is the expression of a fixed and limited 
power, therefore we could not possibly infer from an 
effect of this kind the existence of a cause whose power 
is infinite, but at the utmost only of a cause whose 
power is greater than that of the said effect. I say 
at the utmost, for a phenomenon may be the result of 
many concurrent causes, and its power may be less 
than the power of the sum of such causes, but far 
greater than that of any one of them taken individually. 
On the other hand, the laws of nature, as we have 
shown, extend over infinity, and are conceived by us 


OF MIRACLES 111 


as, after a fashion, eternal, and Nature works in ac- 
cordance with them in a fixed and immutable order; 
therefore, such laws indicate to us in a certain degree 
the infinity, the eternity and the immutability of God. 

We may conclude, then, that we cannot gain knowl- 
edge of the existence and providence of God by means 
of miracles, but that we can far better infer them from 
the fixed and immutable order of Nature. By miracle 
I here mean an event which surpasses, or is thought to 
surpass, human comprehension: for in so far as it is 
supposed to destroy or interrupt the order of Nature or 
her laws, it not only can give us no knowledge of God, 
but, contrariwise, takes away that which we naturally 
have, and makes us doubt of God and everything else. 

Neither do I recognize any difference between an 
event against the laws of Nature and an event beyond 
the laws of Nature (that is, according to some, an 
event which does not contravene Nature, though she is 
inadequate to produce or effect it), for a miracle is 
wrought in, and not beyond Nature, though it may be 
said in itself to be above Nature, and, therefore, must 
necessarily interrupt the order of Nature, which other- 
wise we conceive of as fixed and unchangeable, accord- 
ing to God’s decrees. If therefore anything should 
come to pass in Nature which does not follow from her 
laws, it would also be in contravention to the order 
which God has established in Nature forever through 
universal natural laws. It would, therefore, be in con- 
travention to God’s nature and laws, and, consequently 
belief in it would throw doubt upon everything, and 
lead to Atheism. 

I think I have now sufficiently established my second 


112 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


point, so that we can again conclude that a miracle, 
whether in contravention to, or beyond, Nature, is a 
mere absurdity; and therefore that what is meant in 
Scripture by a miracle can only be a work of Nature, 
which surpasses, or is believed to surpass, human com- 
prehension. Before passing on to my third point, I 
will adduce Scriptural authority for my assertion that 
God cannot be known from miracles. Scripture no- 
where states the doctrine openly, but it can readily be 
inferred from several passages. Firstly, that in which 
Moses commands (Deut. xiii.) that a false prophet 
should be put to death, even though he work miracles: 
“Tf there arise a prophet among you, and giveth thee 
a sign or wonder, and the sign or wonder come to pass, 
saying, Let us go after other gods . . . thou shalt not 
hearken unto the voice of that prophet; for the Lord 
your God proveth you, and. that prophet shall be put to 
death.” From this it clearly follows that miracles could 
be wrought even by false prophets; and that, unless 
men are honestly endowed with the true knowledge and 
love of God, they may be as easily led by miracles to 
follow false gods as to follow the true God; for these 
words are added: “For the Lord your God tempts you, 
that He may know whether you love Him with all your 
heart and with all your mind.” 

Further, the Israelites, from all their miracles, were 
unable to form a sound conception of God, as their 
experience testified: for when they had persuaded 
themselves that Moses had departed from among them 
they petitioned Aaron to give them visible gods; and 
the idea of God they had formed as the result of all 
their miracles was acalf! ... 


OF MIRACLES 113 


I now go on to my third point, and show from Scrip- 
ture that the decrees and mandates of God, and conse- 
quently His providence, are merely the order of Nature 
—that is, when Scripture describes an event as accom- 
plished by God or God’s will, we must understand 
merely that it was in accordance with the law and 
order of Nature, not, as most people believe, that Na- 
ture had for a season ceased to act, or that her order 
was temporarily interrupted. But Scripture does not 
directly teach matters unconnected with its doctrine, 
wherefore it has no care to explain things by their 
natural causes, nor to expound matters merely specu- 
lative. Wherefore our conclusion must be gathered by 
inference from those Scriptural narratives which hap- 
pen to be written more at length and circumstantially 
than usual. Of these I will cite a few. 

In the first book of Samuel (ix. 15, 16), it is related 
that God revealed to Samuel that He would send Saul 
to him, yet God did not send Saul to Samuel as people 
are wont to send one man to another. His “sending” 
was merely the ordinary course of Nature. Saul was 
looking for the asses he had lost, and was meditating a 
return home without them, when, at the suggestion of 
his servant, he went to the Prophet Samuel, to learn 
from him where he might find them. From no part of 
the narrative does it appear that Saul had any com- 
mand from God to visit Samuel beyond this natural 
motive. . J: 

But perhaps some one will insist that we find many 
things in Scripture which seem in nowise explicable by 
natural causes, as, for instance, that the sins of men 
and their prayers can be the cause of rain and of the 


114 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


earth’s fertility, or that faith can heal the blind, and 
so on. But I think I have already made sufficient 
answer: I have shown that Scripture does not explain 
things by their secondary causes, but only narrates 
them in the order and the style which has most power 
to move men, and especially uneducated men, to de- 
votion; and therefore it speaks inaccurately of God 
and of events, seeing that its object is not to convince 
the reason, but to attract and lay hold of the imag- 
ination. If the Bible were to describe the destruction 
of an empire in the style of political historians, the 
masses would remain unstirred, whereas the contrary’ 
is the case when it adopts the method of poetic de- 
scription, and refers all things immediately to God. 
When, therefore, the Bible says that the earth is barren 
because of men’s sins, or that the blind were healed 
by faith, we ought to take no more notice than 
when it says that God is angry at men’s sins, that 
He is sad, that He repents of the good He has 
promised and done; or that on seeing a sign He 
remembers something He had promised, and other 
similar expressions, which are either thrown out poeti- 
cally or related according to the opinion and prejudices 
of the writer. 

We may then be absolutely certain that every event 
which is truly described in Scripture necessarily hap- 
pened, like everything else, according to natural laws; 
and if anything is there set down which can be proved 
in set terms to contravene the order of Nature, or not 
to be deducible therefrom, we must believe it to have 
been foisted into the sacred writings by irreligious 
hands; for whatsoever is contrary to Nature is also 


OF MIRACLES re, 


contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to rea- 
son is absurd, and, zpso facto, to be rejected. 

There remain some points concerning the interpre 
tation of miracles to be noted, or rather to be recapitu- 
lated, for most of them have been already stated. 
These I proceed to discuss tn the fourth division of my 
subject, and I am led to do so Jest any one should, by 
wrongly interpreting a miracle, rashly suspect that he 
has found something in Scripture contrary to human 
reason. 

It is very rare for men to relate an event simply as 
it happened, without adding any element of their own 
judgment. When they hear or see anything new, they 
are, unless strictly on their guard, so occupied with 
their own preconceived opinions that they perceive 
something quite different from the plain facts seen or 
heard, especially if such facts surpass the comprehen- 
sion of the beholder or hearer, and, most of all, if he is 
interested in their happening in a given way. 

Thus men relate in chronicles and histories their 
own opinions rather than actual events, so that one 
and the same event is so differently related by two 
men of different opinions, that it seems like two sepa- 
rate occurrences; and, further, it is very easy from 
historical chronicles to gather the personal opinions 
of the historian. 

I could cite many Instances in proof of this from the 
writings both of natural philosophers and historians, 
but I will content myself with one only from Scripture, 
and leave the reader to judge of the rest. 

In the time of Joshua the Hebrews held the ordinary 
opinion that the sun moves with a daily motion, and 


116 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


that the earth remains at rest; to this preconceived 
opinion they adapted the miracle which occurred dur- 
ing their battle with the five kings. They did not 
simply relate that that day was longer than usual, but 
asserted that the sun and moon stood still, or ceased 
from their motion—a statement which would be of 
great service to them at that time in convincing and 
proving by experience to the Gentiles, who worshiped 
the sun, that the sun was under the control of another 
deity who could compel it to change its daily course. 
Thus, partly through religious motives, partly through 
preconceived opinions, they conceived of and related 
the occurrence as something quite different from what 
really happened. 

Thus in order to interpret the Scriptural miracles 
and understand from the narration of them how they 
really happened, it is necessary to know the opinions 
of those who first related them, and have recorded them 
for us in writing, and to distinguish such opinions from 
the actual impression made upon their senses, other- 
wise we shall confound opinions and judgments with 
the actual miracle as it really occurred; nay, further, 
we shall confound actual events with symbolical and 
imaginary ones. For many things are narrated in 
Scripture as real, and were believed to be real, which 
were in fact only symbolical and imaginary. As, for 
instance, that God came down from heaven (Exod. 
xix. 28, Deut. v. 28), and that Mount Sinai smoked 
because God descended upon it surrounded with fire; 
or, again, that Elijah ascended into heaven in a chariot 
of fire, with horses of fire; all these things were as- 
suredly merely symbols adapted to the opinions of 


OF MIRACLES 117 


those who have handed them down to us as they were 
represented to them, namely, as real. All who have 
any education know that God has no right hand nor 
left; that He is not moved nor at rest, nor in a par- 
ticular place, but that He is absolutely infinite and 
contains in Himself all perfections. 

These things, I repeat, are known to whoever judges 
of things by the perception of pure reason, and not 
according as his imagination is affected by his outward 
senses,—following the example of the masses who 
imagine a bodily Deity, holding a royal court with a 
throne on the convexity of heaven, above the stars, 
which are believed to be not very far off from the 
earth. 

To these and similar opinions very many narrations 
in Scripture are adapted, and should not, therefore, be 
mistaken by philosophers for realities. 

Lastly, in order to understand, in the case of mira- 
cles, what actually took place, we ought to be familiar 
with Jewish phrases and metaphors; any one who did 
not make sufficient allowance for these would be con- 
tinually seeing miracles in Scripture where nothing of 
the kind is intended by the writer; he would thus miss 
the knowledge not only of what actually happened, but 
also of the mind of the writers of the sacred text. For 
instance, Zachariah, speaking of some future war, says 
(chap. xiv., verse 7): “It shall be one day which shal] 
be known to the Lord, not day nor night; but at even 
time it shall be light.” In these words he seems to 
predict a great miracle, yet he only means that the 
battle will be doubtful the whole day, that the issue 
will be known only to God, but that in the evening 


118 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


they will gain the victory. The prophets frequently 
used to predict victories and defeats of the nations in 
similar phrases. Thus Isaiah, describing the destruc- 
tion of Babylon, says (chap. xiii.): “The stars of 
heaven, and the constellations thereof, shall not give 
their light; the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, 
and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.” Now 
I suppose no one imagines that at the destruction of 
Babylon these phenomena actually occurred any more 
than that which the prophet adds, “For I will make 
the heavens to tremble, and remove the earth out of 
her place.” 

So, too, Isaiah in foretelling to the Jews that they 
would return from Babylon to Jerusalem in safety, and 
would not suffer from thirst on their journey, says: 
“And they thirsted not when He led them through the 
deserts; He caused the waters to flow out of the rocks 
for them; He clave the rocks, and the waters gushed 
out.” These words merely mean that the Jews, like 
other people, found springs in the desert, at which 
they quenched their thirst; for when the Jews returned 
to Jerusalem with the consent of Cyrus, it is admitted 
that no similar miracles befell them. 

In this way many occurrences in the Bible are to be 
regarded merely as Jewish expressions. There is no 
need for me to go through them in detail; but I will 
call attention generally to the fact that the Jews em- 
ployed such phrases not only rhetorically, but also, 
and indeed chiefly, from devotional motives. Such is 
the reason for the substitution of “bless God” for 
“curse God” (in 1 Kings xxi. 10, and Job ii. 9), and 
for all things being referred to God, whence it appears 


OF MIRACLES bo 


that the Bible seems to relate nothing but miracles, 
even when speaking of the most ordinary occurrences, 
as in the examples given above. 

Hence we must believe that when the Bible says that 
the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, it only means that 
Pharaoh was obstinate; when it says that God opened 
the windows of heaven, it only means that it rained very 
hard, and so on. When we reflect on these peculiari- 
ties, and also’on the fact that most things are related 
very shortly, with very little detail, and almost in 
abridgments, we shall see that there is hardly anything 
in Scripture which can be proved contrary to natural 
reason, while, on the other hand, many things which 
before seemed obscure, will after a little consideration 
be understood and easily explained. 

I think I have now very clearly explained all that 
I proposed to explain, but before I finish this chapter 
I would call attention to the fact that I have adopted 
a different method in speaking of miracles to that which 
I employed in treating of prophecy. Of prophecy I 
have asserted nothing which could not be inferred from 
premises revealed in Scripture, whereas in this chapter 
I have deduced my conclusions solely from the prin- 
ciples ascertained by the natural light of reason. I 
have proceeded in this way advisedly, for prophecy, in 
that it surpasses human knowledge, is a purely theo- 
logical question; therefore, I knew that I could not 
make any assertions about it, nor learn wherein it 
consists, except through deductions from premises that 
have been revealed; therefore I was compelled to col- 
late the history of prophecy, and to draw therefrom 
certain conclusions which would teach me, in so far as 


120 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


such teaching is possible, the nature and properties 
of the gift. But in the case of miracles, as our inquiry 
is a question purely philosophical (namely, whether 
anything can happen which contravenes, or does not 
follow from the laws of Nature), I was not under any 
such necessity: I therefore thought it wiser to unravel 
the difficulty through premises ascertained and thor- 
oughly known by the natural light of reason. I say I 
thought it wiser, for I could also easily have solved 
the problem merely from the doctrines and funda- 
mental principles of Scripture: in order that every one 
may acknowledge this, I will briefly show how it could 
be done. 

Scripture makes the general assertion in several 
passages that nature’s course is fixed and unchange- 
able. (In Ps. cxlviii. 6, for instance, and Jer. xxxi. 35.) 
The wise man also (in Eccles. i. 10) distinctly teaches 
that “there is nothing new under the sun,” and (in 
verses II, 12), illustrating the same idea, he adds that 
although something occasionally happens which seems 
new, it is not really new, but “hath been already of old 
time, which was before us, whereof there is no remem- 
brance, neither shall there be any remembrance of 
things that are to come with those that come after.” 
Again (in chap. iii. 11), he says, “God hath made 
everything beautiful in his time,’ and immediately 
afterwards adds, “I know that whatsoever God doeth, 
it shall be for ever; nothing can be put to it, nor 
anything taken from it.” 

Now all these texts teach most distinctly that Nature 
preserves a fixed and unchangeable order and that God 
in all ages known and unknown has been the same; 


OF MIRACLES 121 


further, that the laws of Nature are so perfect that 
nothing can be added thereto nor taken therefrom; and, 
lastly, that miracles only appear as something new be- 
cause of man’s ignorance. 

Such is the express teaching of Scripture. Nowhere 
does Scripture assert that anything happens which 
contradicts, or cannot follow from the laws of Nature; 
and therefore we should not attribute to it such a 
EIOCLEING Mesias 

The conclusion, then, that is most plainly put before 
us is, that miracles were natural occurrences, and must 
therefore be so explained as to appear neither new (in 
the words of Solomon) nor contrary to Nature, but, as 
far as possible, in complete agreement with ordinary 
events. This can easily be done by any one, now that 
I have set forth the rules drawn from Scripture. 
Nevertheless, though I maintain that Scripture teaches 
this doctrine, I do not assert that it teaches it as a 
truth necessary to salvation, but only that the prophets 
were in agreement with ourselves on the point; there- 
fore every one is free to think on the subject as he 
likes, according as he thinks it best for himself, and 
most likely to conduce to the worship of God and to 
single-hearted religion. 


CHAPTER VIII 


OF THE DIVINE NATURE 


Definitions 


I. By cause of itself, I understand that, whose es- 
sence involves existence; or that, whose nature cannot 
be conceived unless existing. 

II. That thing is called finite in its own kind (in 
suo genere) which can be limited by another thing of 
the same nature. For example, a body is called finite, 
because we always conceive another which is greater. 
So a thought is limited by another thought; but a body 
is not limited by a thought, nor a thought by a body. 

III. By substance, I understand that which is in 
itself and is conceived through itself; in other words, 
that, the conception of which does not need the concep- 
tion of another thing from which it must be formed. 

IV. By attribute, I understand that which the in- 
tellect perceives of substance, as constituting its 
essence. 

V. By mode, I understand the affections of sub- 
stance, or that which is in another thing through which 
also it is conceived. 

VI. By God, I understand Being absolutely infinite, 
that is to say, substance consisting of infinite attributes, 
each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, 


Explanation.—I say absolutely infinite but not in- 
122 


OF THE DIVINE NATURE 123 


finite in its own kind (in suo genere); for of whatever 
is infinite only in its own kind (7m suo genere), we can 
deny infinite attributes; but to the essence of that 
which is absolutely infinite pertains whatever expresses 
essence and involves no negation. 

VII. That thing is called free which exists from 
the necessity of its own nature alone, and is determined 
to action by itself alone. That thing, on the other 
hand, is called necessary, or rather compelled, which 
by another is determined to existence and action in a 
fixed and prescribed manner. 

VIII. By eternity, I understand existence itself, so 
far as it is conceived necessarily to follow from the 
definition alone of the eternal thing. 

Explanation.—For such existence, like the essence of 
the thing, is conceived as an eternal truth. It can- 
not therefore be explained by duration of time, even 
if the duration be conceived without beginning or 
end. 


Axioms 


I. Everything which is, is either in itself or in an- 
other. 

II. That which cannot be conceived through an- 
other must be conceived through itself. 

III. From a given determinate cause an effect nec- 
essarily follows; and, on the other hand, if no deter- 
minate cause be given, it is impossible that an effect 
can follow. 

IV. The knowledge (cognitio) of an effect depends 
upon and involves the knowledge of the cause. 

V. Those things which have nothing mutually in 


124 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


common with one another cannot through one another 
be mutually understood, that is to say, the conception 
of the one does not involve the conception of the other. 
VI. A true idea must agree with that of which it is 
the idea (cum suo ideato). 
VII. The essence of that thing which can be con- 
ceived as not existing does not involve existence. 


The Essence of God 


God, or substance consisting of infinite attributes, 
each one of which expresses eternal and infinite es- 
sence, necessarily exists. 

[This can be proved in the following manner]: 

For the existence or non-existence of everything 
there must be a reason or cause. For example, if a 
triangle exists, there must be a reason or cause why 
it exists; and if it does not exist, there must be a reason 
or cause which hinders its existence or which negates 
it. But this reason or cause must either be contained 
in the nature of the thing or le outside it. For ex- 
ample, the nature of the thing itself shows the reason 
why a square circle does not exist, the reason being 
that a square circle involves a contradiction. And the 
reason, on the other hand, why substance exists follows 
from its nature alone, which involves existence. But 
the reason why a circle or triangle exists or does not 
exist is not drawn from their nature, but from the 
order of corporeal nature generally; for from that it 
must follow either that a triangle necessarily exists, 
or that it is impossible for it to exist. But this is self- 
evident. Therefore it follows that if there be no cause 


OF THE DIVINE NATURE 125 


nor reason which hinders a thing from existing, it exists 
necessarily. If therefore there be no reason nor cause 
which hinders God from existing, or which negates His 
existence, we must conclude absolutely that He neces- 
sarily exists. But if there be such a reason or cause, it 
must be either in the nature itself of God or must lie 
outside it, that is to say, in another substance of an- 
other nature. For if the reason lay in a substance of 
the same nature, the existence of God would be by. 
this very fact admitted. But substance possessing an- 
other nature could have nothing in common with God, 
and therefore could not give Him existence nor negate 
it. Since, therefore, the reason or cause which could 
negate the divine existence cannot be outside the divine 
nature, it will necessarily, supposing that the divine 
nature does not exist, be in His nature itself, which 
would therefore involve a contradiction. But to affirm 
this of the Being absolutely infinite and consummately 
perfect is absurd. Therefore neither in God nor out- 
side God is there any cause or reason which can negate 
His existence, and therefore God necessarily exists. ... 


The Corporeality of God 


_ There are those who imagine God to be like a man, 
composed of body and soul and subject to passions; 
but it is clear enough from what has already been 
demonstrated how far off men who believe this are from 
the true knowledge of God. But these I dismiss, for 
all men who have in any way looked into the divine 
nature deny that God is corporeal. That He cannot be 
so they conclusively prove by showing that by “body” 


126 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


we understand a certain quantity possessing length, 
breadth, and depth, limited by some fixed form; and 
that to attribute these to God, a being absolutely in- 
finite, is the greatest absurdity. But yet at the same 
time, from other arguments by which they endeavor 
to confirm their proof, they clearly show that they 
remove altogether from the divine nature substance 
itself corporeal or extended, affirming that it was cre- 
ated by God. By what divine power, however, it 
could have been created they are altogether ignorant, 
so that it is clear they do not understand what they 
themselves say. .. . 

But I will refute my adversaries’ arguments, which, 
taken altogether, come to this. First, that corporeal 
substance, in so far as it is substance, consists, as they 
suppose, of parts, and therefore they deny that it can 
be infinite, and consequently that it can pertain to 
God. This they illustrate by many examples, one or 
two of which I will adduce. If corporeal substance, 
they say, be infinite, let us conceive it to be divided 
into two parts; each part, therefore, will be either finite 
or infinite. If each part be finite, then the infinite is 
composed of two finite parts, which is absurd. If each 
part be infinite, there is then an infinite twice as great 
as another infinite, which is also absurd. Again, if 
infinite quantity be measured by equal parts of a foot 
each, it must contain an infinite number of such parts, 
and similarly if it be measured by equal parts of an 
inch each; and therefore one infinite number will be 
twelve times greater than another infinite number. 
Lastly, if from one point of any infinite quantity it be 
imagined that two lines, AB, AC, which at first are at 


OF THE DIVINE NATURE 127 


a certain and determinate distance from one another, 
be infinitely extended, it is plain that the distance be- 
tween B and C will be continually increased, and at 


B 


A 
G 


length from being determinate will be indeterminable, 
Since therefore these absurdities follow, as they think, 
from supposing quantity to be infinite, they conclude 
that corporeal substance must be finite, and conse- 
quently cannot pertain to the essence of God. A sec- 
ond argument is assumed from the absolute perfection 
of God. For God, they say, since He is a being abso- 
lutely perfect, cannot suffer; but corporeal substance, 
since it is divisible, can suffer: it follows, therefore, 
that it does not pertain to God’s essence. 

These are the arguments which I find in authors, by 
which they endeavor to show that corporeal substance 
is unworthy of the divine nature, and cannot pertain 
to it. . . . If any one will rightly consider the matter, 
he will see that all these absurdities (supposing that 
they are all absurdities, a point which I will now take 
for granted), from which these authors attempt to 
draw the conclusion that substance extended is finite, 
do not by any means follow from the supposition that 
quantity is infinite, but from the supposition that in- 
finite quantity is measurable, and that it is made up of 


128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


finite parts. Therefore, from the absurdities to which 
this leads nothing can be concluded, excepting that in- 
finite quantity is not measurable, and that it cannot 
be composed of finite parts. But this is what we 
[maintain]. 

. . . The shaft therefore which is aimed at us turns 
against those who cast it. If, therefore, from these 
absurdities any one should attempt to conclude that 
substance extended must be finite, he would, forsooth, 
be in the position of the man who supposes a circle to 
have the properties of a square, and then concludes 
that it has no center, such that all the lines drawn 
from it to the circumference are equal. For corporeal 
substance, which cannot be conceived except as in- 
finite, one and indivisible, is conceived by those against 
whom I argue to be composed of finite parts, and to be 
multiplex and divisible, in order that they may prove 
it finite. Just in the same way others, after they have 
imagined a line to consist of points, know how to dis- 
cover many arguments, by which they show that a line 
cannot be divided ad infinitum; and indeed it is not 
less absurd to suppose that corporeal substance is 
composed of bodies or parts than to suppose that a 
body is composed of surfaces, surfaces of lines, and 
that lines, finally, are composed of points. Every one 
who knows that clear reason is infallible ought to admit 
this, and especially those who deny that a vacuum 
can exist. For if corporeal substance could be so 
divided that its parts could be really distinct, why 
could not one part be annihilated, the rest remaining, 
as before. connected with one another? And why must 


OF THE DIVINE NATURE 129 


all be so fitted together that there can be no vacuum? 
For of things which are really distinct the one from 
the other, one can be and remain in its own position 
without the other. Since therefore it is supposed 
that there is no vacuum in Nature (about which I will 
speak at another time), but that all the parts must be 
united, so that no vacuum can exist, it follows that 
they cannot be really separated; that is to say, that 
corporeal substance, in so far as it is substance, cannot 
be divided. 

If, nevertheless, any one should now ask why there 
is a natural tendency to consider quantity as capable 
of division, I reply that quantity is conceived by us 
in two ways: either abstractly or superficially; that is 
to say, aS we imagine it, or else as substance, in which 
way it is conceived by the intellect alone. If, there- 
fore, we regard quantity (as we do very often and 
easily) as it exists in the imagination, we find it to be 
finite, divisible, and composed of parts; but if we 
regard it as it exists in the intellect, and conceive it in 
so far as it is substance, which is very difficult, then, 
as we have already sufficiently demonstrated, we find 
it to be infinite, one, and indivisible. 

This will be plain enough to all who know how to 
distinguish between the imagination and the intellect, 
and more especially if we remember that matter is 
everywhere the same, and that, except in so far as we 
regard it as affected in different ways, parts are not 
distinguished in it; that is to say, they are distinguished 
with regard to mode, but not with regard to reality. 
For example, we conceive water as being divided, in 


130 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


so far as it is water, and that its parts are separated 
from one another; but in so far as it is corporeal sub- 
stance we cannot thus conceive it, for as such it is 
neither separated nor divided. Moreover, water, in 
so far as it is water, is originated and destroyed; but 
in so far as it is substance, it is neither originated nor 
destroyed. 

By this reasoning I think that I have also answered 
the second argument, since that too is based upon the 
assumption that matter, considered as substance, is 
divisible and composed of parts. And even if what 
I have urged were not true, I do not know why matter 
should be unworthy of the divine nature, since outside 
God no substance can exist from which the divine 
nature could suffer. All things, I say, are in God, and 
everything which takes place by the laws alone of the 
infinite nature of God, and follows (as I shall presently 
show) from the necessity of His essence. Therefore 
in no way whatever can it be asserted that God suffers 
from anything, or that substance extended, even if it 
be supposed divisible, is unworthy of the divine nature, 
provided only it be allowed that it is eternal and in- 
finite. . . . Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can 
either be or be conceived without God. 


The Properties of God 


I 


From the necessity of the divine nature infinite num- 
bers of things in infinite ways (that is to say, all things 


OF THE DIVINE NATURE 131 


which can be conceived by the infinite intellect) must 
follow. | 

This proposition must be plain to every one who 
considers that from the given definition of anything a 
number of properties necessarily following from it 
(that is to say, following from the essence of the thing 
itself) are inferred by the intellect, and just in propor- 
tion as the definition of the thing expresses a greater 
reality, that is to say, just in proportion as the essence 
of the thing defined involves a greater reality, will more 
properties be inferred. But the divine nature possesses 
absolutely infinite attributes (Def. 6), each one of 
which expresses infinite essence in its own kind (i suo 
genere), and therefore, from the necessity of the divine 
nature, infinite numbers of things in infinite ways (that 
is to say, all things which can be conceived by the in- 
finite intellect) must necessarily follow. Hence it fol- 
lows that God is the efficient cause of all things which 
can fall under the infinite intellect. It follows, sec- 
ondly, that God is cause through Himself, and not 
through that which is contingent (per accidens). It 
follows, thirdly, that God is absolutely the first cause. 


II 


We have just shown that from the necessity, or 
(which is the same thing) from the laws only of the 
divine nature, infinite numbers of things absolutely 
follow: and we have demonstrated that nothing can 
be, nor can be conceived, without God, but that all 
things are in God. Therefore, outside Himself, there 
can be nothing by which He may be determined or 


{32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


compelled to act; and therefore He acts from the laws 
of His own nature only, and is compelled by no one. 

Hence it follows, firstly, that there is no cause, either 
external to God or within Him, which can excite Him 
to act except the perfection of His own nature. It 
follows, secondly, that God alone is a free cause; for 
God alone exists from the necessity alone of His own 
nature and acts from the necessity alone of His own 
nature. Therefore He alone is a free cause. 

There are some who think that God is a free cause 
because He can, as they think, bring about that those 
things which we have said follow from His nature— 
that is to say, those things which are in His power— 
should not be, or should not be produced by Him. But 
this is simply saying that God could bring about that 
it should not follow from the nature of a triangle that 
its three angles should be equal to two right angles, 
or that from a given cause an effect should not follow, 
which is absurd. But I shall show farther on, without 
the help of this proposition, that neither intellect nor 
will pertain to the nature of God. 

I know indeed that there are many who think them- 
selves able to demonstrate that intellect of the highest 
order and freedom of will both pertain to the nature of 
God, for they say that they know nothing more perfect 
which they can attribute to Him than that which is the 
chief perfection in ourselves. But although they con- 
ceive God as actually possessing the highest intellect, 
they nevertheless do not believe that He can bring 
about that all those things should exist which are ac- 
tually in His intellect, for they think that by such a 
supposition they would destroy His power. If He hau 


OF THE DIVINE NATURE 133 


created, they say, all things which are in His intellect, 
He could have created nothing more, and this, they 
believe, does not accord with God’s omnipotence; so 
then they prefer to consider God as indifferent to all 
things, and creating nothing except that which He has 
decreed to create by a certain absolute will. But I 
think that I have shown with sufficient clearness that 
from the supreme power of God, or from His infinite 
nature, infinite things in infinite ways, that is to say, all 
things, have necessarily flowed, or continually follow 
by the same necessity, in the same way as it follows 
from the nature of a triangle, from eternity and to 
eternity, that its three angles are equal to two right 
angles. The omnipotence of God has therefore been 
actual from eternity, and in the same actuality will 
remain to eternity. In this way the omnipotence of 
God, in my opinion, is far more firmly established. 

My adversaries, indeed (if I may be permitted to 
speak plainly), seem to deny the omnipotence of God, 
inasmuch as they are forced to admit that He has in 
His mind an infinite number of things which might be 
created, but which, nevertheless, He will never be able 
to create, for if He were to create all things which 
He has in His mind, He would, according to them, ex- 
haust His omnipotence and make Himself imperfect. 
Therefore, in order to make a perfect God, they are 
compelled to make Him incapable of doing all those 
things to which His power extends, and anything more 
absurd than this, or more opposed to God’s omnipo- 
tence, I do not think can be imagined. 

Moreover—to say a word, too, here about the in- 
tellect and will which we commonly attribute to God 


134 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


—if intellect and will pertain to His eternal essence, 
these attributes cannot be understood in the sense in 
which men generally use them, for the intellect and 
will which could constitute His essence would have to 
differ entirely from our intellect and will, and could 
resemble ours in nothing except in name. There could 
be no further likeness than that between the celestial 
constellation of the Dog and the animal which barks. 
This I will demonstrate as follows: If intellect pertains 
to the divine nature, it cannot, like our intellect, follow 
the things which are its object (as many suppose), nor 
can it be simultaneous in its nature with them, since 
God is prior to all things in causality; but, on the 
contrary, the truth and formal essence of things is 
what it is, because as such it exists objectively in God’s 
intellect. Therefore the intellect of God, in so far 
as it is conceived to constitute His essence, is in truth 
the cause of things, both of their essence and of their 
existence,—a truth which seems to have been under- 
stood by those who have maintained that God’s in- 
tellect, will, and power are one and the same thing. 

Since, therefore, God’s intellect is the sole cause of 
things, both of their essence and of their existence (as 
we have already shown), it must necessarily differ 
from them with regard both to its essence and exist- 
ence; for an effect differs from its cause precisely in 
that which it has from its cause. For example, one man 
is the cause of the existence but not of the essence of 
another, for the essence is an eternal truth; and there- 
fore with regard to essence the two men may exactly 
resemble one another, but with regard to existence 
they must differ. Consequently if the existence of one 





OF THE DIVINE NATURE 135 


should perish, that of the other will not therefore 
perish; but if the essence of one could be destroyed 
and become false, the essence of the other would be 
likewise destroyed. Therefore a thing which is the 
cause both of the essence and of the existence of any 
effect must differ from that effect both with regard to 
its essence and with regard to its existence. But the 
intellect of God is the cause both of the essence and 
existence of our intellect; therefore the intellect of 
God, so far as it is conceived to constitute the divine 
essence, differs from our intellect both with regard to 
its essence and its existence, nor can it coincide with 
our intellect in anything except the name, which is 
what we essayed to prove. The same demonstration 
may be applied to the will, as any one may easily see 
for himself, 


III 


All things which are, are in God and must be con- 
celved through Him and therefore He is the cause of 
the things which are in Himself. Moreover, outside 
God there can be no substance, that is to say (Def. 3), 
outside Him nothing can exist which is in itself. God, 
therefore, is the immanent, but not the transitive cause 
of all things. 


The Necessity of All Things 


In nature there is nothing contingent, but all things 
are determined from the necessity of the divine nature 
to exist and act in a certain manner. . . . That which 
has not been thus determined by God cannot determine 
itself to action. A thing which has been determined 


136 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


by God to any action cannot render itself indetermi- 
nate. 

. . . All things have necessarily followed from the 
given nature of God and from the necessity of His 
nature have been determined to existence and action 
in a certain manner. If therefore things could have 
been of another nature, or could have been determined 
in another manner to action, so that the order of nature 
would have been different, the nature of God might 
then be different to that which it now is, and hence 
that different nature would necessarily exist, and there 
might consequently be two or more Gods, which is 
absurd. Therefore things could be produced by God 
in no other manner and in no other order than that in 
which they have been produced. 

Since I have thus shown, with greater clearness, than 
that of noonday light, that in things there is absolutely 
nothing by virtue of which they can be called con- 
tingent, I wish now to explain in a few words what 
is to be understood by contingent, but, firstly, what is 
to be understood by mecessary and impossible. 

A thing is called necessary either in reference to its 
essence or its cause. For the existence of a thing 
necessarily follows either from the essence and defini- 
tion of the thing itself, or from a given efficient cause. 
In the same way a thing is said to be impossible either 
because the essence of the thing itself or its definition 
involves a contradiction, or because no external cause 
exists determinate to the production of such a thing. 
But a thing cannot be called contingent unless with 
reference to a deficiency in our knowledge. For if we 
do not know that the essence of a thing involves a con- 


sy 
ch. 


OF THE DIVINE NATURE 137 


tradiction, or if we actually know that it involves no 
contradiction, and nevertheless we can affirm nothing 
with certainty about its existence because the order 
of causes is concealed from us, that thing can never 
appear to us either as necessary or impossible, and 
therefore we call it either contingent or possible. 

From what has gone before it clearly follows that 
things have been produced by God in the highest de- 
gree of perfection, since they have necessarily followed 
from the existence of a most perfect nature. Nor 
does this doctrine accuse God of any imperfection, 
but, on the contrary, His perfection has compelled us 
to affirm it. Indeed, from its contrary would clearly 
follow, as I have shown above, that God is not ab- 
solutely perfect, since, if things had been produced 
in any other fashion, another nature would have had 
to be assigned to Him, different from that which the 
consideration of the most perfect Being compels us 
to assign to Him. I do not doubt that many will reject 
this opinion as ridiculous, nor will they care to apply 
themselves to its consideration, and this from no other 
reason than that they have been in the habit of assign- 
ing to God another liberty widely different from that 
absolute will which (Def. 7) we have taught. On 
the other hand, I do not doubt, if they were willing 
to study the matter and properly to consider the series 
of our demonstrations, that they would altogether re- 
ject this liberty which they now assign to God, not 
only as of no value, but as a great obstacle to knowl- 
edge. Neither is there any need that I should here 
repeat those things which are said [above] ?. 


1Pp, 132-135. 


138 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


But for the sake of those who differ from me, I will 
here show that although it be granted that will per- 
tains to God’s essence, it follows nevertheless from His 
perfection that things could be created in no other mode 
or order by Him. This it will be easy to show if we 
first consider that which my opponents themselves ad- 
mit, that it depends upon the decree and will of God 
alone that each thing should be what it is, for other- 
wise God would not be the cause of all things. It is 
also admitted that all God’s decrees were decreed by 
God Himself from all eternity, for otherwise imperfec- 
tion and inconstancy would be proved against Him. 
But since in eternity there is no when nor before nor 
after, it follows from the perfection of God alone that 
He neither can decree nor could ever have decreed any- 
thing else than that which He has decreed; that is to 
say, God has not existed before His decrees, and can 
never exist without them. But it is said that although 
it be supposed that God had made the nature of things 
different from that which it is, or that from eternity 
He had decreed something else about Nature and her 
order, it would not thence follow that any imperfec- 
tion exists in God. But if this be said, it must at the 
same time be allowed that God can change His de- 
crees. For if God had decreed something about Nature 
and her order other than that which He has decreed— 
that is to say, if He had willed and conceived some- 
thing else about Nature—He would necessarily have 
had an intellect and a will different from those which 
He now has. And if it be allowed to assign to God 
another intellect and another will without any change 
of His essence and of His perfection, what is the rea- 


OF THE DIVINE NATURE 139 


son why He cannot now change His decrees about 
creation and nevertheless remain equally perfect? For 
His intellect and will regarding created things and 
their order remain the same in relationship to His es- 
sence and perfection in whatever manner His intellect 
and will are conceived. 

Moreover, all the philosophers whom I have seen 
admit that there is no such thing as an intellect exist- 
ing potentially in God, but only an intellect existing 
actually. But since His intellect and His will are not 
distinguishable from His essence, as all admit, it fol- 
lows from this also that if God had had another intellect 
actually and another will, His essence would have been 
necessarily different, and hence, as I showed at the 
beginning, if things had been produced by God in a 
manner different from that in which they now exist, 
God’s intellect and will, that is to say, His essence (as 
has been granted), must have been different, which is 
absurd. 

Since, therefore, things could have been produced 
by God in no other manner or order, this being a truth 
which follows from His absolute perfection, there is 
no sound reasoning which can persuade us to believe 
that God was unwilling to create all things which are 
in His intellect with the same perfection as that in 
which they exist in His intellect. But we shall be told 
that there is no perfection nor imperfection in things, 
but that that which is in them by reason of which they 
are perfect or imperfect and are said to be good or 
evil depends upon the will of God alone, and there- 
fore if God had willed He could have effected that 
that which is now perfection should have been the 


140 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


extreme of imperfection, and vice versa. But what 
else would this be than openly to affirm that God, who 
necessarily understands what He wills, is able by His 
will to understand things in a manner different from 
that in which He understands them, which, as I have 
just shown, is a great absurdity? I can therefore turn 
the argument on my opponents in this way. All things 
depend upon the power of God. In order that things 
may be differently constituted, it would be necessary 
that God’s will should be differently constituted; but 
God’s will cannot be other than it is as we have lately 
most clearly deduced from His perfection. Things 
therefore cannot be differently constituted. 

I confess that this opinion, which subjects all things 
to a certain indifferent God’s will, and affirms that all 
things depend upon God’s good pleasure, is at a less 
distance from the truth than the opinion of those who 
affirm that God does everything for the sake of the 
Good. For these seem to place something outside of 
God which is independent of Him, to which He looks 
while He is at work as to a model, or at which He aims 
as if at a certain mark. This is indeed nothing else 
than to subject God to fate, the most absurd thing 
which can be affirmed of Him whom we have shown to 
be the first and only free cause of the essence of all 
things as well as of their existence. Therefore it is 
not worth while that I should waste time in refuting 
this absurdity. 

Before I go any farther, I wish here to explain or 
rather to recall to recollection, what we mean by 
natura naturans and what by natura naturata. For, 
from what has gone before, I think it is plain that by 


OF THE DIVINE NATURE 141 


natura naturans we are to understand that which is in 
itself and is conceived through itself, or those attributes 
of substance which express eternal and infinite essence, 
that is to say, God in so far as He is considered as a 
free cause. But by natura naturata I understand 
everything which follows from the necessity of the 
nature of God, or of any one of God’s attributes, that 
is to say, all the modes of God’s attributes in so far 
as they are considered as things which are in God, and 
which without God can neither be nor can be con- 
ceived. 

. . . Individual things are nothing but affections or 
modes of God’s attributes, expressing those attributes 
in a certain and determinate manner. 


General Conclusions 


I have now explained the nature of God and its prop- 
erties. I have shown that He necessarily exists; 
that He is one God; that from the necessity alone of 
His own nature He is and acts; that He is, and in what 
way He is, the free cause of all things; that all things 
are in Him, and so depend upon Him that without Him 
they can neither be nor can be conceived; and, finally, 
that all things have been predetermined by Him, not 
indeed from freedom of will or from absolute good 
pleasure, but from His absolute nature or infinite 
power. 

Moreover, wherever an opportunity was afforded, 
I have endeavored to remove prejudices which might 
hinder the perception of the truth of what I have 
demonstrated; but because not a few still remain which 


142 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


have been and are now sufficient to prove a very great 
hindrance to the comprehension of the connection of 
things in the manner in which I have explained it, I 
have thought it worth while to call them up to be ex- 
amined by reason. But all these prejudices which I 
here undertake to point out depend upon this solely: 
that it is commonly supposed that all things in Nature, 
like men, work to some end; and indeed it is thought to 
be certain that God Himself directs all things to some 
sure end, for it is said that God has made all things 
for man, and man that he may worship God. 

This, therefore, I will first investigate by inquiring, 
firstly, why so many rest in this prejudice, and why all 
are so naturally inclined to embrace it? I shall then 
show its falsity, and, finally, the manner in which there 
have arisen from it prejudices concerning good and evil, 
merit and sin, praise and blame, order and disorder, 
beauty and deformity, and so forth. This, however, 
is not the place to deduce these things from the nature 
of the human mind. It will be sufficient if I here take 
as an axiom that which no one ought to dispute, namely, 
that man is born ignorant of the causes of things, and 
that he has a desire, of which he is conscious, to seek 
that which is profitable to him. From this it follows, 
firstly, that he thinks himself free because he is con- 
scious of his wishes and appetites, whilst at the same 
time he is ignorant of the causes by which he is led 
to wish and desire, not dreaming what they are; and, 
secondly, it follows that man does everything for an 
end, namely, for that which is profitable to him, which 
is what he seeks. Hence it happens that he attempts 
to discover merely the final causes of that which has 


OF THE DIVINE NATURE 143 


happened; and when he has heard them he is satisfied, 
because there is no longer any cause for further un- 
certainty. But if he cannot hear from another what 
these final causes are, nothing remains but to turn 
to himself and reflect upon the ends which usually de- 
termine him to the like actions, and thus by his own 
mind he necessarily judges that of another. 

Moreover, since he discovers, both within and with- 
out himself a multitude of means which contribute not 
a little to the attainment of what is profitable to him- 
self—for example, the eyes, which are useful for seeing, 
the teeth for mastication, plants and animals for 
nourishment, the sun for giving light, the sea for feed- 
ing fish, etc.—it comes to pass that all natural objects 
are considered as means for obtaining what is profit- 
able. These too being evidently discovered and not 
created by man, hence he has a cause for believing that 
some other person exists, who has prepared them for 
man’s use. For having considered them as means it 
was impossible to believe that they had created them- 
selves, and so he was obliged to infer from the means 
which he was in the habit of providing for himself that 
some ruler or rulers of Nature exist, endowed with 
human liberty, who have taken care of all things for 
him, and have made all things for his use. Since he 
never heard anything about the mind of these rulers, he 
was compelled to judge of it from his own, and hence he 
affirmed that the gods direct everything for his advan- 
tage, in order that he may be bound to them and hold 
them in the highest honor. This is the reason why 
each man has devised for himself, out of his own brain, 
a different mode of worshiping God, so that God 


144 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


might love him above others, and direct all Nature to 
the service of his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice. 

Thus has this prejudice been turned into a supersti- 
tion and has driven deep roots into the mind—a prej- 
udice which was the reason why every one has so 
eagerly tried to discover and explain the final causes 
of things. The attempt, however, to show that Nature 
does nothing in vain (that is to say, nothing which is 
not profitable to man), seems to end in showing that 
Nature, the gods, and man are alike mad. 

Do but see, I pray, to what all this has led. Amidst 
so much in Nature that is beneficial, not a few things 
must have been observed which are injurious, such as 
storms, earthquakes, diseases, and it was affirmed that 
these things happened either because the gods were 
angry because of wrongs which had been inflicted on 
them by man, or because of sins committed in the 
method of worshiping them; and although experience 
daily contradicted this, and showed by an infinity of 
examples that both the beneficial and the injurious 
were indiscriminately bestowed on the pious and the 
impious, the inveterate prejudices on this point have 
not therefore been abandoned. For it was much easier 
for a man to place these things aside with others of 
the use of which he was ignorant, and thus retain his 
present and inborn state of ignorance, than to destroy 
the whole superstructure and think out a new one. 
Hence it was looked upon as indisputable that the 
judgments of the gods far surpass our comprehension; 
and this opinion alone would have been sufficient to 
keep the human race in darkness to all eternity, if 
mathematics, which does not deal with ends, but with 


OF THE DIVINE NATURE 145 


the essences and properties of forms, had not placed 
before us another rule of truth. In addition to mathe- 
matics, other causes also might be assigned, which it 
is superfluous here to enumerate, tending to make men 
reflect upon these universal prejudices, and leading 
them to a true knowledge of things. 

I have thus sufficiently explained what I promised 
in the first place to explain. There will now be no 
need of many words to show that Nature has set no 
end before herself, and that all final causes are noth- 
ing but human fictions. For I believe that this is suffi- 
ciently evident both from the foundations and causes 
of this prejudice, as well as from all those propositions 
in which I have shown that all things are begotten by 
a certain eternal necessity of Nature and in absolute 
perfection. Thus much, nevertheless, I will add, that 
this doctrine concerning an end altogether overturns 
nature. For that which is in truth the cause it con- 
siders as the effect, and vice versa. Again, that which 
is first in Nature it puts last; and, finally, that which 
is supreme and most perfect it makes the most imper- 
fect. For, passing by the first two assertions as self- 
evident, it is plain that that effect is the most per- 
fect which is immediately produced by God, and in 
proportion as intermediate causes are necessary for 
the production of a thing is it imperfect. But if things 
which are immediately produced by God were made 
in order that He might obtain the end He had in view, 
then the last things for the sake of which the first exist, 
must be the most perfect of all. 

Again, this doctrine does away with God’s perfection, 
For if God works to obtain an end, He necessarily seeks 


146 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


something of which he stands in need. And although 
theologians and metaphysicians distinguish between the 
end of want and the end of assimilation (finem indi- 
gentice et finem assimilationis), they confess that God 
has done all things for His own sake, and not for the 
sake of the things to be created, because before the 
creation they can assign nothing excepting God for 
the sake of which God could do anything; and there- 
fore they are necessarily compelled to admit that God > 
stood in need of and desired those things for which He 
determined to prepare means. This is self-evident. 
Nor is it here to be overlooked that the adherents of 
this doctrine, who have found a pleasure in displaying 
their ingenuity in assigning the ends of things, have 
introduced a new species of argument, not the reductio 
ad impossible, but the reductio ad ignorantiam, to prove 
their position, which shows that it had no other method 
of defense left. 

For, by way of example, if a stone had fallen from 
some roof on somebody’s head and killed him, they 
will demonstrate in this manner that the stone has 
fallen in order to kill the man. For if it did not fall 
for that purpose by the will of God, how could so many 
circumstances concur through chance (and a number 
often simultaneously do concur)? You will answer, 
perhaps, that the event happened because the wind 
blew and the man was passing that way. But, they 
will urge, why did the wind blow at that time, and 
why did the man pass that way precisely at the same 
moment? If you again reply that the wind rose then 
because the sea on the preceding day began to be 
stormy, the weather hitherto having been calm, and 


OF THE DIVINE NATURE 147 


that the man had been invited by a friend, they will 
urge again—because there is no end of questioning— 
But why was the sea agitated? why was the man 
invited at that time? And so they will not cease from 
asking the causes of causes, until at last you fly to the 
will of God, the refuge for ignorance. 

So, also, when they behold the structure of the human 
body, they are amazed; and because they are ignorant 
of the causes of such art, they conclude that the body 
was made not by mechanical but by a supernatural or 
divine art, and has been formed in such a way so that 
the one part may not injure the other. Hence it hap- 
pens that the man who endeavors to find out the true 
causes of miracles, and who desires as a wise man to 
understand Nature, and not to gape at it like a fool, is 
generally considered and proclaimed to be a heretic 
and impious by those whom the vulgar worship as 
the interpreters both of Nature and the gods. For 
these know that if ignorance be removed, amazed 
stupidity, the sole ground on which they rely in argu- 
ing or in defending their authority, is taken away also. 
But these things I leave and pass on to that which I 
determined to do in the third place. 

After man has persuaded himself that all things 
which exist are made for him, he must in everything 
adjudge that to be of the greatest importance which 
is most useful to him, and he must esteem that to be 
of surpassing worth by which he is most beneficially 
affected. In this way he is compelled to form those 
notions by which he explains Nature; such, for in- 
stance, as good, evil, order, confusion, heat, cold, 
beauty, and deformity, etc.; and because he supposes 


148 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


himself to be free, notions like those of praise and 
blame, sin and merit, have arisen. These latter I 
shall hereafter explain when I have treated of human 
nature; the former I will here briefly unfold. 

It is to be observed that man has given the name 
good to everything which leads to health and the wor- 
ship of God; on the contrary, everything which does 
not lead thereto he calls evil. But because those who 
do not understand Nature affirm nothing about things 
themselves, but only imagine them, and take the im- 
agination to be understanding, they therefore, ignorant 
of things and their nature, firmly believe an order to 
be in things; for when things are so placed that if 
they are represented to us through the senses, we can 
easily imagine them, and consequently easily remem- 
ber them, we call them well arranged; but if they are 
not placed so that we can imagine and remember them, 
we call them badly arranged or confused. Moreover, 
since those things are more especially pleasing to us 
which we can easily imagine, men therefore prefer 
order to confusion, as if order were something in Na- 
ture apart from our own imagination; and they say 
that God has created everything in order, and in this 
manner they ignorantly attribute imagination to God, 
unless they mean perhaps that God, out of consider- 
ation for the human imagination, has disposed things 
in the manner in which they can most easily be 
imagined. No hesitation either seems to be caused by 
the fact that an infinite number of things are dis- 
covered which far surpass our imagination, and very 
many which confound it through its weakness. But 
enough of this. 


OF THE DIVINE NATURE 149 


The other notions which I have mentioned are noth- 
ing but modes in which the imagination is affected in 
different ways, and nevertheless they are regarded by 
the ignorant as being specially attributes of things, 
because, aS we have remarked, men consider all things 
as made for themselves, and call the nature of a thing 
good, evil, sound, putrid, or corrupt, just as they are 
affected by it. For example, if the motion by which 
the nerves are affected by means of objects represented 
to the eye conduces to well-being, the objects by which 
it is caused are called beautiful; while those exciting 
a contrary motion are called deformed. Those things, 
too, which stimulate the senses through the nostrils are 
called sweet-smelling or stinking; those which act 
through the taste are called sweet or bitter, full-flavored 
or insipid; those which act through the touch, hard or 
soft, heavy or light; those, lastly, which act through 
the ears are said to make a noise, sound, or harmony, 
the last having caused men to lose their senses to 
such a degree that they have believed that God even 
is delighted with it. Indeed, philosophers may be found 
who have persuaded themselves that the celestial mo- 
tions beget a harmony. 

All these things sufficiently show that every one 
judges things by the constitution of his brain, or rather 
accepts the affections of his imagination in the place 
of things.’ It is not, therefore, to be wondered at, as 

1 Beauty, my dear Sir, is not so much a quality of the object 
beheld, as an effect in him who beholds it. If our sight were longer 
or shorter, or, if our constitution were different, what now appears 
beautiful to us would seem misshapen and what we now think 
misshapen we should regard as beautiful. The most beautiful hand 


seen through the microscope will appear horrible. Some things 
are beautiful at a distance, but ugly near; thus things regarded in 


150 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


we may observe in passing, that all those controversies 
which we see have arisen amongst men, so that at last 
skepticism has been the result. For although human 
bodies agree in many things, they differ in more, and 
therefore that which to one person is good will appear 
to another evil, that which to one is well arranged to 
another is confused, that which pleases one will dis- 
please another, and so on in other cases which I pass 
by both because we cannot notice them at length here, 
and because they are within the experience of 
every one. For every one has heard the expressions: 
So many heads, so many ways of thinking; Every one 
is satisfied with his own way of thinking; Differences 
of brains are not less common than differences of 
taste;—all which maxims show that men decide upon 
matters according to the constitution of their brains, 
and imagine rather than understand things. 

If men understood things, they would, as mathe- 
matics prove, at least be all alike convinced if they 
were not all alike attracted. We see, therefore, that all 
those methods by which the common people are in the 
habit of explaining Nature are only different sorts of 
imaginations, and do not reveal the nature of anything 
in itself, but only the constitution of the imagination; 
and because they have names as if they were entities 
existing apart from the imagination, I call them entities 
not of the reason but of the imagination. All argument 


themselves, and in relation to God, are neither ugly nor beautiful. 
Therefore, he who says that God has created the world so that it 
might be beautiful is bound to adopt one of the two alternatives: 
either that God created the world for the sake of men’s pleasure 
and eyesight, or else that He created men’s pleasure and eyesight 
for the sake of the world. From a letter to Hugo Boxel (1674). 


OF THE DIVINE NATURE 151 


therefore, urged against us based upon such notions 
can be easily refuted. 

Many people, for instance, are accustomed to argue 
thus:—If all things have followed from the necessity 
of the most perfect nature of God, how is it that so 
many imperfections have arisen in Nature—corruption, 
for instance, of things till they stink; deformity, excit- 
ing disgust; confusion, evil, crime, etc.? But, as I have 
just observed, all this is easily answered. For the per- 
fection of things is to be judged by their nature and 
power alone; nor are they more or less perfect because 
they delight or offend the human senses, or because they 
are beneficial or prejudicial to human nature. But to 
those who ask why God has not created all men in such 
a manner that they might be controlled by the dictates 
of reason alone, I give but this answer: Because to 
Him material! was not wanting for the creation of every- 
thing, from the highest down to the very lowest grade 
of perfection; or, to speak more properly, because 
the laws of His nature were so ample that they sufficed 
for the production of everything which can be conceived 
by an infinite intellect, as I have demonstrated. 

These are the prejudices which I undertook to notice 
here. If any others of a similar character remain, 
they can easily be rectified with a little thought by 
any one. 





SECOND PART 


ON MAN 


The more things the mind knows, the better it under- 
stands its own powers and the order of Nature. The 
better it understands its own powers, so much the more 
easily can it direct itself and propose rules to itself. 
The better, also, it understands the order of Nature, the 
more easily can it restrain itself from what is useless. 

SPINOZA. 





CHAPTER IX 


THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF THE 
HUMAN MIND 


Introductory 


I pAss on now to explain those things which must 
necessarily follow from the essence of God or the Be- 
ing eternal and infinite; not indeed to explain all these 
things, for we have demonstrated that an infinitude of 
things must follow in an infinite number of ways,— 
but to consider those things only which may conduct 
us, as it were, by the hand to a knowledge of the human 
mind and its highest happiness. 


Definitions 


I. By body, I understand a mode which expresses 
in a certain and determinate manner the essence of 
God in so far as He is considered as the thing extended. 

II. I say that to the essence of anything pertains 
that, which being given, the thing itself is necessarily 
posited, and being taken away, the thing is necessarily 
taken; or, in other words, that, without which the thing 
can neither be nor be conceived, and which in its turn 
cannot be nor be conceived without the thing. 

III. By idea, I understand a conception of the 
mind which the mind forms because it is a thinking 
thing. 

155 


156 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


Explanation —I use the word conception rather than 
perception because the name perception seems to in- 
dicate that the mind is passive in its relation to the 
object. But the word conception seems to express 
the action of the mind. 

IV. By adequate idea, I understand an idea which, 
in so far as it is considered in itself, without reference 
to the object, has all the properties or internal signs 
(denominationes intrinsecas) of a true idea. 

Explanation.—I ‘say internal, so as to exclude that 
which is external, the agreement, namely, of the idea 
with its object. 

V. Duration is the indefinite continuation of ex- 
istence. 

Explanation.—I call it indefinite because it cannot 
be determined by the nature itself of the existing thing 
nor by the efficient cause, which necessarily posits the 
existence of the thing but does not take it away. 

VI. By reality and perfection I understand the 
same thing. 

VII. By individual things I understand things which 
are finite and which have a determinate existence; and 
if a number of individuals so unite in one action that 
they are all simultaneously the cause of one effect, I 
consider them all, so far, as one individual thing. 


Axioms 


I. The essence of man does not involve necessary 
existence; that is to say, the existence as well as the 
non-existence of this or that man may or may not fol- 
low from the order of Nature. 

II. Man thinks. 


NATURE AND ORIGIN OF HUMAN MIND 157 


III. Modes of thought, such as love, desire, or the 
emotions of the mind, by whatever name they may 
be called, do not exist, unless in the same individual 
the idea exist of a thing loved, desired, etc. But the 
idea may exist although no other mode of thinking 
exist. 

IV. We perceive that a certain body is affected in 
many ways. 

V. No individual things are felt or perceived by 
us excepting bodies and modes of thought. 


The Mind of God 


Individual thoughts, or this and that thought, are 
modes which express the nature of God in a certain 
and determinate manner. God therefore possesses an 
attribute, the conception of which is involved in all 
individual thoughts, and through which they are con- 
ceived. Thought, therefore, is one of the infinite 
attributes of God which expresses the eternal and 
infinite essence of God or, in other words, God is a 
thinking thing. 

This proposition is plain from the fact that we can 
conceive an infinite thinking Being. For the more 
things a thinking being can think, the more reality 
or perfection we conceive it to possess, and therefore 
the being which can think an infinitude of things in 
infinite ways is necessarily infinite by his power of 
thinking. Since, therefore, we can conceive an infinite 
Being by attending to thought alone, thought is neces- 
sarily one of the infinite attributes of God.t 


1 [Similarly, it can be demonstrated that] extension is an attribute 
of God, or God is an extended thing. 


158 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


God can think an infinitude of things in infinite ways, 
or (which is the same thing) can form an idea of His 
essence and of all the things which necessarily follow 
from it. But everything which is in the power of God 
is necessary. Therefore in God there necessarily ex- 
ists the idea of His essence, and of all things which 
necessarily follow from His essence. 

The infinite intellect comprehends nothing but the 
attributes of God and His modes. But God is one. 
Therefore the idea of God, from which infinite num- 
bers of things follow in infinite ways, can be one only. 

The common people understand by God’s power His 
free will and right over all existing things, which are 
therefore commonly looked upon as contingent; for 
they say that God has the power of destroying every- 
thing and reducing it to nothing. They very fre- 
quently, too, compare God’s power with the power 
of kings. That there is any similarity between the two 
we have disproved. We have shown that God does 
everything with that necessity with which He under- 
stands Himself; that is to say, as it follows from the 
necessity of the divine nature that God understands 
Himself (a truth admitted by all), so by the same 
necessity it follows that God does an infinitude of 
things in infinite ways. Moreover, we have shown 
that the power of God is nothing but the active essence 
of God, and therefore it is as impossible for us to con- 
ceive that God does not act as that He does not exist. 
If it. pleased me to go farther, I could show besides 
that the power which the common people ascribe to 
God is not only a human power (which shows that 
they look upon God as a man, or as being like a man), 


NATURE AND ORIGIN OF HUMAN MIND 159 


but that it also involves weakness. But I do not care 
to talk so much upon the same subject. Again and 
again I ask the reader to consider and reconsider what 
is said upon this subject [above].* For it is not pos- 
sible for any one properly to understand the things 
which I wish to prove unless he takes great care not 
to confound the power of God with the human power 
and right of kings. 


The Order and Dependence of Ideas in God 


The formal Being of ideas is a mode of thought (as 
is self-evident); that is to say, a mode which expresses 
in a certain manner the nature of God in so far as He 
is a thinking thing. It is a mode, therefore, that in- 
volves the conception of no other attribute of God, 
and consequently is the effect of no other attribute 
except that of thought; therefore the formal Being of 
ideas recognizes God for its cause in so far only as 
He is considered as a thinking thing, and not in’so far 
as He is manifested by any other attribute; that is to 
say, the ideas both of God’s attributes and of indi- 
vidual things do not recognize as their efficient cause 
the objects of the ideas or the things which are per- 
ceived, but God Himself in so far as He is a thinking 
thing.’ 

God’s power of thinking is equal to His actual 
power of acting; that is to say, whatever follows 


1 Chapter Eight. 

2 The formal Being of things which are not modes of thought does 
not follow from the divine nature because of His prior knowledge 
of these things, but, just as ideas follow from the attribute of 
thought, in the same manner and with the same necessity the ob- 
jects of ideas follow and are concluded from their attributes. 


160 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


formally from the infinite nature of God, follows from 
the idea of God (idea Dei), in the same order and in 
the same connection objectively in God. 

The order and connection of ideas is the same as 
the order and connection of things. 

Before we go any farther, we must here recall to 
our memory what we have already demonstrated, that 
everything which can be perceived by the infinite 
intellect as constituting the essence of substance per- 
tains entirely to the one sole substance only, and con- 
sequently that substance thinking and substance ex- 
tended are one and the same substance, which is now 
comprehended under this attribute and now under 
that. Thus, also, a mode of extension and the idea of 
that mode are one and the same thing expressed in 
two different ways—a truth which some of the He- 
brews appear to have seen as if through a cloud, since 
they say that God, the intellect of God, and the things 
which are the objects of that intellect are one and 
the same thing. For example, the circle existing in 
nature and the idea that is in God of an existing circle 
are one and the same thing, which is manifested 
through different attributes; and, therefore, whether 
we think of Nature under the attribute of extension, 
or under the attribute of thought, or under any other 
attribute whatever, we shall discover one and the same 
order, or one and the same connection of causes; that 
is to say, in every case the same sequence of things. 
Nor have I had any other reason for saying that God 
is the cause of the idea, for example, of the circle in so 
far only as He is a thinking thing, and of the circle 
itself in so far as He is an extended thing, but this, 





NATURE AND ORIGIN OF HUMAN MIND. 161 


that the formal Being of the idea of a circle can only 
be perceived through another mode of thought, as its 
proximate cause, and this again must be perceived 
through another, and so on ad infinitum. So that when 
things are considered as modes of thought, we must 
explain the order of the whole of Nature or the connec- 
tion of causes by the attribute of thought alone, and 
when things are considered as modes of extension, the 
order of the whole of Nature must be explained through 
the attribute of extension alone, and so with other at- 
tributes. Therefore God is in truth the cause of things 
as they are in themselves in so far as He consists of 
infinite attributes, nor for the present can I explain 
the matter more clearly. 


The Origin of the Human Mind 


The human mind is a part of the infinite intellect 
of God, and therefore, when we say that the human 
mind perceives this or that thing, we say nothing else 
than that God has this or that idea; not indeed in so 
far as He is infinite, but in so far as He is manifested 
through the nature of the human mind, or in so far as 
He forms the essence of the human mind; and when 
we say that God has this or that idea, not merely in 
so far as He forms the nature of the human mind, but 
in so far as He has at the same time with the human 
mind the idea also of another thing, then we say that 
the human mind perceives the thing partially or in- 
adequately. 

. . . When you ask me my opinion on the question * 


1From a letter to Henry Oldenburg (1665). 


162 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


raised concerning our knowledge of the means, whereby 
each part of Nature agrees with its whole, and the man- 
ner in which it is associated with the remaining parts, 
I presume you are asking for the reasons which in- 
duce us to believe that each part of Nature agrees 
with its whole, and is associated with the remaining 
parts. For as to the means whereby the parts are 
really associated, and each part agrees with its whole, 
I told you in my former letter that I am in ignorance. 
To answer such a question we should have to know the 
whole of Nature and its several parts. I will therefore 
endeavor to show the reason which led me to make 
the statement; but I will promise that I do not at- 
tribute to Nature either beauty or deformity, order or 
confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can 
things be called beautiful or deformed, ordered or con- 
fused. 

By the association of parts, then, I merely mean 
that the laws or nature of one part adapt themselves 
to the laws or nature of another part, so as to cause 
the least possible inconsistency. As to the whole and 
the parts, I mean that a given number of things are 
parts of a whole, in so far as the nature of each of 
them is adapted to the nature of the rest so that they 
all, as far as possible, agree together. On the other 
hand, in so far as they do not agree, each of them 
forms, in our minds, a separate idea, and is to that 
extent considered as a whole, not as a part. For in- 
stance, when the parts of lymph, chyle, etc., combine, 
according to the proportion of the figure and size of 
each, so as to evidently unite, and form one fluid, the 
chyle, lymph, etc., considered under this aspect, are 





NATURE AND ORIGIN OF HUMAN MIND 163 


part of the blood; but, in so far as we consider the par- 
ticles of lymph as differing in figure and size from the 
particles of chyle, we shall consider each of the two 
as a whole, not as a part. 

Let us imagine, with your permission, a little worm, 
living in the blood, able to distinguish by sight the 
particles of blood, lymph, etc., and to reflect on the 
manner in which each particle, on meeting with an- 
other particle, either is repulsed, or communicates a 
portion of its own motion. This little worm would 
live in the blood in the same way as we live in a part 
of the universe, and would consider each particle of 
blood, not as a part, but as a whole. He would be 
unable to determine how all the parts are modified 
by the general nature of blood, and are compelled by 
it to adapt themselves so as to stand in a fixed rela- 
tion to one another. For if we imagine that there are 
no causes external to the blood, which could com- 
municate fresh movements to it, nor any space beyond 
the blood, nor any bodies whereto the particles of 
blood could communicate their motion, it is certain 
that the blood would always remain in the same state, 
and its particles would undergo no modifications, save 
those which may be conceived as arising from the 
relations of motion existing between the lymph, the 
chyle, etc., The blood would then always have to be 
considered as a whole, not as a part. But as there 
exist, as a matter of fact, very many causes which 
modify, in a given manner, the nature of blood, and 
are, in turn, modified thereby, it follows that other 
motions and other relations arise in the blood, spring- 
ing not from the mutual relations of its parts only, but 


164 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


from the mutual relations between the blood as a whole 
and external causes. Thus the blood comes to be 
regarded as a part, not as a whole. So much for the 
whole and the part. 

All natural bodies can and ought to be considered 
in the same way as we have here considered the blood, 
for all bodies are surrounded by others, and are mutu- 
ally determined to exist and operate in a fixed and 
definite proportion, while the relations between motion 
and rest in the sum total of them, that is, in the whole 
universe, remain unchanged. Hence it follows that 
each body, in so far as it exists as modified in a par- 
ticular manner, must be considered as a part of the 
whole universe, as agreeing with the whole, and as- 
sociated with the remaining parts. As the nature of the 
universe is not limited, like the nature of blood, but 
is absolutely infinite, its parts are by this nature of 
infinite power infinitely modified, and compelled to 
undergo infinite variations. .. . 

You see, therefore, how and why I think that the 
human body is a part of Nature. As regards the human 
mind, I believe that it also is a part of Nature; for I 
maintain that there exists in Nature an infinite power 
of thinking, which, in so far as it is infinite, contains 
subjectively the whole of Nature, and its thoughts pro- 
ceed in the same manner as Nature—that is, in the 
sphere of ideas. Further, I take the human mind to 
be identical with this said power, not in so far as it 
is infinite, and perceives the whole of Nature, but in 
so far as it is finite, and perceives only the human body. 
In this manner, I maintain that the human mind is 
part of an infinite understanding. 





NATURE AND ORIGIN OF HUMAN MIND 165 


The Nature of the Human Mind 


The essence of man is formed by certain modes of 
the attributes of God, that is to say, modes of thought, 
the idea of all of them being prior by nature to the 
modes of thought themselves; and if this idea exists, 
other modes (which also have an idea in nature prior 
to them) must exist in the same individual likewise. 
Therefore an idea is the first thing which forms the 
Being of the human mind. But it is not the idea of a 
non-existent thing, for then the idea itself could not 
be said to exist. It will therefore be the idea of 
something actually existing. Neither will it be the 
idea of an infinite thing, for an infinite thing must al- 
ways necessarily exist, and this is absurd. Therefore 
the first thing which forms the actual Being of the 
human mind is the idea of an individual thing actually 
existing. 

The knowledge of everything which happens in the 
object of any idea necessarily exists in God, in so far 
as He is considered as modified by the idea of that 
object; that is to say, in so far as He forms the mind 
of any being. The knowledge, therefore, necessarily 
exists in God of everything which happens in the 
object of the idea constituting the human mind; that 
is to say, it exists in Him in so far as He forms the 
nature of the human mind; or, whatever happens in 
the object of the idea constituting the human mind 
must be perceived by the human mind; in other words, 
an idea of that thing will necessarily exist in the human 
mind. That is to say, if the object of the idea con- 
stituting the human mind be a body, nothing can hap- 


166 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


pen in that body which is not perceived by the mind. 

If the body were not the object of the human mind, 
the ideas of the modifications of the body would not 
be in God, in so far as He has formed our mind, but 
would be in Him in so far as He has formed the mind 
of another thing; that is to say, the ideas of the modi- 
fications of the body would not be in our mind. But 
we have ideas of the modifications of a body; therefore 
the object of the idea constituting the human mind is a 
body, and that, too, actually existing. Again, if there 
were also any other object of the mind besides a body, 
since nothing exists from which some effect does not 
follow, the idea of some effort produced by this object 
would necessarily exist in our mind. But there is no 
such idea. ‘Therefore the object of the idea constitut- 
ing the human mind is a body, or a certain mode of 
extension actually existing, and nothing else. 

Hence it follows that man is composed of mind and 
body, and that the human body exists as we perceive 
it. 

Hence we see not only that the human mind is 
united to the body, but also what is to be understood 
by the union of the mind and body. But no one can 
understand it adequately or distinctly without knowing 
adequately beforehand the nature of our body; for 
those things which we have proved hitherto are alto- 
gether general, nor do they refer more to man than 
to other individuals, all of which are animate, although 
in different degrees. For of everything there neces- 
sarily exists in God an idea of which He is the cause, 
in the same way as the idea of the human body exists 
in Him; and therefore everything that we have said 





NATURE AND ORIGIN OF HUMAN MIND 167 


of the idea of the human body is necessarily true of 
the idea of any other thing. We cannot, however, 
deny that ideas, like objects themselves, differ from 
one another, and that one is more excellent and con- 
tains more reality than another, just as the object of 
one idea is more excellent and contains more reality 
than another. Therefore, in order to determine the 
differences between the human mind and other things 
and its superiority over them, we must first know, as 
we have said, the nature of its object, that is to say, the 
nature of the human body. I am not able to explain 
it here, nor is such an explanation necessary for what 
I wish to demonstrate. 

This much, nevertheless, I will say generally, that 
in proportion as one body is better adapted than an- 
other to do or suffer many things, in the same propor- 
tion will the mind at the same time be better adapted 
to perceive many things, and the more the actions of 
a body depend upon itself alone, and the less other 
bodies codperate with it in action, the better adapted 
will the mind be for distinctly understanding. We 
can thus determine the superiority of one mind to an- 
other; we can also see the reason why we have only a 
very confused knowledge of our body, together with 
m, ny other things which I shall deduce in what fol- 
lows. 


The Complexity of the Human Mind 


The idea which constitutes the formal Being of the 
human mind is the idea of a body which is composed 
of a number of individuals composite to a high degree. 
But an idea of each individual composing the body 


168 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


must necessarily exist in God; therefore the idea of 
the human body is composed of these several ideas 
of the component parts. The idea which constitutes 
the formal Being of the human mind is not simple, but 
is composed of a number of ideas. 

All ways in which any body is affected follow at the 
same time from the nature of the affected body, and 
from the nature of the affecting body; therefore the 
idea of these modifications necessarily involves the na- 
ture of each body, and therefore the idea of each way 
in which the human body is affected by an external 
body involves the nature of the human body and of 
the external body. 

Hence it follows, in the first place, that the human 
mind perceives the nature of many bodies together 
with that of its own body. 

It follows, secondly, that the ideas we have of ex- 
ternal bodies indicate the constitution of our own 
body rather than the nature of external bodies. 


Imagination 


If the human body be affected in a way which in- 
volves the nature of any external body, the human 
mind will contemplate that external body as actually 
existing or as present, until the human body be affected 
by a mode which excludes the existence or presence 
of the external body. 

When external bodies so determine the fluid parts 
of the human body that they often strike upon the 
softer parts, the fluid parts change the plane of the 
soft parts, and thence it happens that the fluid parts 


NATURE AND ORIGIN OF HUMAN MIND 169 


are reflected from the new planes in a direction differ- 
ent from that in which they used to be reflected, and 
that also afterwards when they strike against these new 
planes by their own spontaneous motion, they are re- 
flected in the same way as when they were impelled 
towards those planes by external bodies. Consequently 
those fluid bodies produce a modification in the human 
body while they keep up this reflex motion similar to 
that produced by the presence of an external body. 
The mind, therefore, will think as before, that is to say, 
it will again contemplate the external body as present. 
This will happen as often as the fluid parts of the 
human body strike against those planes by their own 
spontaneous motion. Therefore, although the external 
bodies by which the human body was once affected do 
not exist the mind will perceive them as if they were 
present so often as this action is repeated in the body. 

We see, therefore, how it is possible for us to con- 
template things which do not exist as if they were 
actually present. This may indeed be produced by 
other causes, but Iam satisfied with having here shown 
one cause through which I could explain it, just as if 
I had explained it through the true cause. I do not 
think, however, that I am far from the truth, since no 
postulate which I have assumed contains anything 
which is not confirmed by an experience that we cannot 
mistrust, after we have proved the existence of the 
human body as we perceive it. 

We clearly see, moreover, what is the difference be- 
tween the idea, for example, of Peter, which constitutes 
the essence of the mind itself of Peter, and the idea of 
Peter himself which is in another man; for example, 


170 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


in Paul. For the former directly manifests the es- 
sence of the body of Peter himself, nor does it involve 
existence unless so long as Peter exists; the latter, on 
the other hand, indicates rather the constitution of 
the body of Paul than the nature of Peter; and there- 
fore so long as Paul’s body exists with that constitu- 
tion, so long will Paul’s mind contemplate Peter as 
present, although he does not exist. But in order that 
we may retain the customary phraseology, we will give 
to those modifications of the human body, the ideas of 
which represent to us external bodies as if they were 
present, the name of images of things, although they do 
not actually reproduce the forms of the things. When 
the mind contemplates bodies in this way, we will say 
that it imagines. Here I wish it to be observed, in 
order that I may begin to show what error is, that 
these imaginations of the mind, regarded by them- 
selves, contain no error, and that the mind is not in 
error because it imagines, but only in so far as it is 
considered as wanting in an idea which excludes the 
existence of those things which it imagines as present. 
For if the mind, when it imagines non-existent things 
to be present, could at the same time know that those 
things did not really exist, it would think its power 
of imagination to be a virtue of its nature and not a 
defect, especially if this faculty of imagining depended 
upon its own nature alone, that is to say, if this faculty 
of the mind were free. 


Association of Ideas and Memory 


If the human body has at any time been simul- 
taneously affected by two or more bodies, whenever 


NATURE AND ORIGIN OF HUMAN MIND 171 


the mind afterwards imagines one of them, it will also 
remember the others. 

We clearly understand by this what memory is. It 
is nothing else than a certain concatenation of ideas, 
involving the nature of things which are outside the 
human body, a concatenation which corresponds in the 
mind to the order and concatenation of the modifica- 
tions of the human body. I say, firstly, that it is a 
concatenation of those ideas only which involve the na- 
ture of things which are outside the human body, and 
not of those ideas which explain the nature of those 
things, for there are in truth ideas of the modifications 
of the human body, which involve its nature as well as 
the nature of external bodies. I say, in the second 
place, that this concatenation takes place according to 
the order and concatenation of the modifications of the 
human body, that I may distinguish it from the con- 
catenation of ideas which takes place according to the 
order of the intellect, and enables the mind to perceive 
things through their first causes, and is the same in 
all men. 

Hence we can clearly understand how it is that the 
mind from the thought of one thing at once turns to 
the thought of another thing which is not in any way 
like the first. For example, from the thought of the 
word pomum a Roman immediately turned to the 
thought of the fruit, which has no resemblance to the 
articulate sound pomum, nor anything in common with 
it, excepting this, that the body of that man was often 
affected by the thing and the sound; that is to say, 
he often heard the word pomum when he saw the fruit. 
In this manner each person will turn from one thought 


172 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


to another according to the manner in which the habit 
of each has arranged the images of things in the body. 
The soldier, for instance, if he sees the footsteps of 
a horse in the sand, will immediately turn from the 
thought of a horse to the thought of a horseman, and 
so to the thought of war. The countryman, on the 
other hand, from the thought of a horse will turn to 
the thought of his plow, his field, etc.; and thus each 
person will turn from one thought to this or that 
thought, according to the manner in which he has been 
accustomed to connect and bind together the images of 
things in his mind. 


CHAPTER X 


THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF HUMAN 
KNOWLEDGE 


Of Truth 


Ay the ideas which are in God always agree with 
those things of which they are the ideas. Therefore, 
all ideas, in so far as they are related to God, are true. 

A true idea* (for we possess a true idea) is some~- 
thing different from its correlate (7deatum); thus a 
circle is different from the idea of a circle. The idea 
of a circle is not something having a circumference 
and a center, as a circle has; nor is the idea of a body 
that body itself. Now, as it is something different 
from its correlate, it is capable of being understood 
through itself; in other words, the idea, in so far as 
its actual essence (essentia formalis) is concerned, may 
be the subject of another subjective essence. And, 
again, this second subjective essence will, regarded in 
itself, be something real and capable of being under- 
stood; and so on indefinitely. For instance, the man 
Peter is something real; the true idea of Peter is the 
reality of Peter represented subjectively, and is in 
itself something real, and quite distinct from the actual 
Peter. Now, as this true idea of Peter is in itself 


1 From the Improvement of the Understanding, §§ 33-35. 
173 


174 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


something real, and has its own individual existence, 
it will also be capable of being understood—that is, of 
being the subject of another idea which will contain 
by representation all that the idea of Peter contains 
actually. And, again, this idea of the idea of Peter 
has its own individuality, which may become the sub- 
ject of yet another idea; and so on indefinitely. This 
every one may make trial of for himself, by reflecting 
that he knows what Peter is, and also knows that he 
knows, and further knows that he knows that he knows, 
etc. Hence, it is plain that, in order to understand 
the actual Peter, it is not necessary first to understand 
the idea of Peter, and still less the idea of the idea of 
Peter. This is the same as saying that in order to 
know, there is no need to know that we know, much 
less to know that we know that we know. This is no 
more necessary than to know the nature of a circle 
before knowing the nature of a triangle. But with 
these ideas the contrary is the case; for in order to 
know that I know, I must first know. Hence it is 
clear that certainty is nothing else than the subjective 
essence of a thing: in other words, the mode in which 
we perceive an actual reality is certainty. Further, it 
is also evident that for the certitude of truth no further 
sign is necessary beyond the possession of a true idea; 
for, as I have shown, it is not necessary to know that 
we know that we know. . . . 

He who has a true idea knows at the same time 
that he has a true idea, nor can he doubt the truth of 
the thing. For no one who has a true idea is ignorant 
that a true idea involves the highest certitude; to have 
a true idea signifying just this, to know a thing per- 


NATURE AND EXTENT OF KNOWLEDGE 175 


fectly or as well as possible. No one, in fact, can 
doubt this, unless he supposes an idea to be something 
dumb, like a picture on a tablet, instead of being a 
mode of thought, that is to say, intelligence itself. 
Moreover, I ask who can know that he understands 
a thing unless he first of all understands that thing? 
that is to say, who can know that he is certain of any- 
thing unless he is first of all certain of that thing? 
Then, again, what can be clearer or more certain than 
a true idea as the standard of truth? Just as light 
reveals both itself and the darkness, so truth is the 
standard of itself and of the false. 


Of Falsity 


There is nothing positive in ideas which can consti- 
tute a form of falsity. But falsity cannot consist in 
absolute privation (for we say that minds and not 
bodies err and are mistaken); nor can it consist in 
absolute ignorance, for to be ignorant and to be in 
error are different. Falsehood, therefore, consists in 
the privation of knowledge which is involved by inade- 
quate knowledge of things or by inadequate and con- 
fused ideas. For instance, men are deceived because 
they think themselves free, and the sole reason for 
thinking so is that they are conscious of their own 
actions, and ignorant of the causes by which those 
actions are determined. Their idea of liberty therefore 
is this—that they know no cause for their own actions; 
for as to saying that their actions depend upon their 
will, these are words to which no idea is attached. 
What the will is, and in what manner it moves the 


176 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


body, every one is ignorant, for those who pretend 
otherwise, and devise seats and dwelling-places of the 
soul, usually excite our laughter or disgust. Just in 
the same manner, when we look at the sun, we imagine 
its distance from us to be about 200 feet; the error 
not consisting solely in the imagination, but arising 
from our not knowing what the true distance is when 
we imagine, and what are the causes of our imagination. 
For although we may afterwards know that the sun 
is more than 600 diameters of the earth distant from 
us, we still imagine it near us, since we imagine it to be 
so near, not because we are ignorant of its true dis- 
tance, but because a modification of our body in- 
volves the essence of the sun, in so far as our body it- 
self is affected by it. 


The Origin and Nature of Confused Ideas 


The ideas of the modifications of the human body 
involve the nature both of external bodies and of the 
human body itself and must involve the nature not only 
of the human body, but of its parts, for the modifica- 
tions are ways in which the parts of the human body, 
and consequently the whole body, are affected. But an 
adequate knowledge of external bodies and of the parts 
composing the human body does not exist in God in 
so far as He is considered as affected by the human 
mind, but in so far as He is affected by other ideas. 
These ideas of modifications, therefore, in so far as 
they are related to the human mind alone, are like con- 
clusions without premises, that is to say, as is self- 
evident, they are confused ideas. 


NATURE AND EXTENT OF KNOWLEDGE 177 


The idea which forms the nature of the mind is 
demonstrated in the same way not to be clear and dis- 
tinct when considered in itself. So also with the idea of 
the human mind, and the ideas of the ideas of the 
modifications of the human body, in so far as they are 
related to the mind alone, as every one may easily see. 

All ideas are in God and in so far as they are related 
to God are true and adequate. No ideas, therefore, 
are inadequate or confused unless in so far as they are 
related to the individual mind of some person. All 
ideas, therefore, both adequate and inadequate, follow 
by the same necessity. 


The Origin and Nature of Adequate Ideas 


Let there be something, A, which is common to all 
bodies, and which is equally in the part of each body 
and in the whole. I say that A can only be adequately 
conceived. For the idea of A will necessarily be ade- 
quate in God, both in so far as He has the idea of 
the human body and in so far as He has the idea of 
its modifications, which involve the nature of the human 
body, and partly also the nature of external bodies; 
that is to say, this idea will necessarily be adequate 
in God in so far as He constitutes the human mind, or 
in so far as He has ideas which are in the human mind. 
The mind, therefore, necessarily perceives A ade- 
quately, both in so far as it perceives itself or its own 
or any external body; nor can A be conceived in any 
other manner. 

Hence it follows that some ideas or notions exist 
which are common to all men, for all bodies agree in 


178 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


some things, which must be adequately, that is to say, 
clearly and distinctly, perceived by all. 

Hence it follows also that the more things the body 
has in common with other bodies, the more things will 
the mind be adapted to perceive. 

Those ideas are also adequate which follow in the 
mind from ideas which are adequate in it. For when 
we say that an idea follows in the human mind from 
ideas which are adequate in it, we do but say that in 
the divine intellect itself an idea exists of which God 
is the cause, not in so far as He is infinite, nor in so 
far as He is affected by the ideas of a multitude of 
individual things, but in so far only as He constitutes 
the essence of the human mind. 

I have thus explained the origin of those notions 
which are called common, and which are the founda- 
tions of our reasoning; but of some axioms or notions 
other causes exist which it would be advantageous to 
explain by our method, for we should thus be able to 
distinguish those notions which are more useful than 
others, and those which are scarcely of any use; those 
which are common; those which are clear and distinct 
only to those persons who do not suffer from prejudice; 
and, finally, those which are ill-founded. Moreover, 
it would be manifest whence these notions which are 
called second, and consequently the axioms founded 
upon them, have taken their origin, and other things, 
too, would be explained which I have thought about 
at different times. Since, however, I have set apart 
this subject for another treatise, and because I do not 
wish to create disgust with excessive prolixity, I have 
determined to pass by these matters here. 


NATURE AND EXTENT OF KNOWLEDGE 179 


But not to omit anything which is necessary for us to 
know, I will briefly give the causes from which terms 
called Transcendental, such as Being, Thing, Some- 
thing, have taken their origin. These terms have arisen 
because the human body, inasmuch as it is limited, can 
form distinctly in itself a certain number only of 
images at once. If this number be exceeded, the im- 
ages will become confused; and if the number of images 
which the body is able to form distinctly be greatly 
exceeded, they will all run one into another. Since 
this is so, it is clear that in proportion to the number 
of images which can be formed at the same time in 
the body will be the number of bodies which the human 
mind can imagine at the same time. If the images in 
the body, therefore, are all confused, the mind will 
confusedly imagine all the bodies without distinguish- 
ing the one from the other, and will include them all, 
as it were, under one attribute, that of being or thing. 

The same confusion may also be caused by lack of 
uniform force in the images and from other analogous 
causes, which there is no need to discuss here, the con- 
sideration of one cause being sufficient for the purpose 
we have in view. For it all comes to this, that these 
terms signify ideas in the highest degree confused. It 
is in this way that those notions have arisen which are 
called Universal, such as, Man, Horse, Dog, etc.; that 
is to say, so many images of men, for instance, are 
formed in the human body at once, that they exceed the 
power of the imagination, not entirely, but to such a 
degree that the mind has no power to imagine the deter- 
minate number of men and the small differences of 
each, such as color and size, etc. It will therefore dis- 


180 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


tinctly imagine that only in which all of them agree in 
so far as the body is affected by them, for by that the 
body was chiefly affected, that is to say, by each indi- 
vidual, and this it will express by the name man, 
covering thereby an infinite number of individuals; to 
imagine a determinate number of individuals being out 
of its power. 

But we must observe that these notions are not 
formed by all persons in the same way, but that they 
vary in each case according to the thing by which the 
body is more frequently affected, and which the mind 
more easily imagines or recollects. For example, those 
who have more frequently looked with admiration upon 
the stature of men, by the name man will understand 
an animal of erect stature, while those who have been in 
the habit of fixing their thoughts on something else, will 
form another common image of men, describing man, 
for instance, as an animal capable of laughter, a biped 
without feathers, a rational animal, and so on; each 
person forming universal images of things according to 
the temperament of his own body. It is not therefore to 
be wondered at that so many controversies have arisen 
amongst those philosophers who have endeavored to ex- 
plain natural objects by the images of things alone. 


The Three Kinds of Knowledge 


From what has been already said, it clearly appears 
that we perceive many things and form universal ideas: 
1. From individual things, represented by the senses 
to us in a mutilated and confused manner, and without 
order to the intellect. These perceptions I have there- 


NATURE AND EXTENT OF KNOWLEDGE 181 


fore been in the habit of calling knowledge from vague 
experience. | 

2. From signs; as, for example, when we hear or 
read certain words, we recollect things and form cer- 
tain ideas of them similar to them, through which ideas 
we imagine things. These two ways of looking at 
things I shall hereafter call knowledge of the first 
kind, opinion or imagination. 

3. From our possessing common notions and ade- 
quate ideas of the properties of things. This I shall 
call reason and knowledge of the second kind. 

Besides these two kinds of knowledge, there is a 
third, as I shall hereafter show, which we shall call 
intuitive science. This kind of knowing advances from 
an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain at- 
tributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the 
essence of things. All this I will explain by one ex- 
ample. Let there be three numbers given through 
which it is required to discover a fourth which shall be 
to the third as the second is to the first. A merchant 
does not hesitate to multiply the second and third 
together and divide the product by the first, either 
because he has not yet forgotten the things which he 
heard without any demonstration from his school- 
master, or because he has seen the truth of the rule 
with the more simple numbers, or because from the 
19th Prop. in the 7th book of Euclid he understands 
the common property of all proportionals. 

But with the simplest numbers there is no need of 
all this. If the numbers 1, 2, 3, for instance, be given, 
every one can see that the fourth proportional is 6 
much more clearly than by any demonstration, because 


182 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


from the ratio in which we see by one intuition that the 
first stands to the second we conclude the fourth. 

To knowledge of the first kind we have said that all 
those ideas belong which are inadequate and confused, 
and, therefore, this knowledge alone is the cause of fal- 
sity. Moreover, to knowledge of the second and third 
kind we have said that those ideas belong which are ade- 
quate, and therefore this knowledge is necessarily true. 

It is the knowledge of the second and third, and not 
that of the first kind, which teaches us to distinguish 
the true from the false. For he who knows how to 
distinguish between the true and the false must have 
an adequate idea of the true and the false, that is to 
say, he must know the true and the false by the second 
or third kind of knowledge. 


Reason and Imaginatton 


It is in the nature of reason to perceive things truly, 
that is to say, as they are in themselves, that is to say, 
not as contingent but as necessary. 

Hence it follows that it is through the imagination 
alone that we look upon things as contingent both with 
reference to the past and the future. 

How this happens I will explain in a few words. We 
have shown above that unless causes occur preventing 
the present existence of things, the mind always imag- 
ines them present before it, even if they do not exist. 
Again, we have shown that if the human body has 
once been simultaneously affected by two external 
bodies, whenever the mind afterwards imagines one it 
will immediately remember the other; that is to say, 


NATURE AND EXTENT OF KNOWLEDGE 183 


it will look upon both as present before it, unless causes 
occur which prevent the present existence of the things. 
No one doubts, too, that we imagine time because we 
imagine some bodies to move with a velocity less, or 
greater than, or equal to that of others. 

Let us therefore suppose a boy who yesterday, for 
the first time, in the morning saw Peter, at midday 
Paul, in the evening Simeon, and to-day in the morn- 
ing again sees Peter. It is plain that as soon as he 
sees the morning light he will imagine the sun passing 
through the same part of the sky as on the day preced- 
ing; that is to say, he will imagine the whole day, and 
at the same time Peter will be connected in his imagina- 
tion with the morning, Paul with midday, and Simeon 
with the evening. In the morning, therefore, the 
existence of Paul and Simeon will be imagined in rela- 
tion to future time, while in the evening, if the boy 
should see Simeon, he will refer Peter and Paul to the 
past, since they will be connected with the past in his 
imagination. This process will be constant in propor- 
tion to the regularity with which he sees Peter, Paul, 
and Simeon in this order. If it should by some means 
happen that on some other evening, in the place of 
Simeon, he should see James, on the following morning 
he will connect in his imagination with the evening at 
one time Simeon and at another James, but not both 
together. For he is supposed to have seen one and 
then the other in the evening, but not both together. 
His imagination will therefore fluctuate, and he will 
connect with a future evening first one and then the 
other; that is to say, he will consider neither as certain, 
but both as a contingency in the future. 


184 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


This fluctuation of the imagination will take place 
in the same way if the imagination is dealing with 
things which we contemplate in the same way with 
reference to past or present time, and consequently we 
imagine things related to time past, present, or future — 
as contingent. 


Sub Specie Atternitatis 


It is of the nature of reason to consider things as 
necessary and not as contingent. This necessity of 
things it perceives truly, that is to say, as it is in itself. 
But this necessity of things is the necessity itself of 
the eternal nature of God. Therefore it is of the nature 
of reason to consider things under this form of eternity. 
Moreover, the foundations of reason are notions which 
explain those things which are common to all, and these 
things explain the essence of no individual thing, and 
must therefore be conceived without any relation to 
time, but under a certain form of eternity. 


The Limits of Human Knowledge 
I 


The parts composing the human body pertain to the 
essence of the body itself only in so far as they com- 
municate their motions to one another by some certain 
method, and not in so far as they can be considered 
as individuals without relation to the human body. 
For the parts of the human body are individuals, com- 
posite to a high degree, parts of which can be separated 
from the human body and communicate their motions 
to other bodies in another way, although the nature 


NATURE AND EXTENT OF KNOWLEDGE 185 


and form of the human body itself is closely preserved. 
Therefore the idea or knowledge of each part will be in 
God in so far as He is considered as affected by another 
idea of an individual thing, which individual thing is 
prior to the part itself in the order of Nature. The 
same thing may be said of each part of the individual 
itself composing the human body, and therefore the 
knowledge of each part composing the human body 
exists in God in so far as He is affected by a number 
of ideas of things, and not in so far as He has the 
idea of the human body only; that is to say, the idea 
which constitutes the nature of the human mind; and 
therefore the human mind does not involve an ade-. 
quate knowledge of the parts composing the human 
body. 

We have shown that the idea of a modification of the 
human body involves the nature of an external body 
so far as the external body determines the human body 
in some certain manner. But in so far as the external 
body is an individual which is not related to the human 
body, its idea or knowledge is in God, in so far as 
He is considered as affected by the idea of another 
thing, which idea is prior by nature to the external 
body itself. Therefore the adequate knowledge of an 
external body is not in God in so far as He has the idea 
of the modification of the human body, or, in other 
words, the idea of the modification of the human body 
does not involve an adequate knowledge of an external 
body. 

When the human mind through the ideas of the 
modifications of its body contemplates external bodies, 
we say that it then imagines, nor can the mind in any 


186 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 

other way imagine external bodies as actually existing. 
Therefore in so far as the mind imagines external 
bodies it does not possess an adequate knowledge of 
them. 


II 


The idea of a modification of the human body does 
not involve an adequate knowledge of the body itself, 
or, in other words, does not adequately express its 
nature, that is to’say, it does not correspond ade- 
quately with the nature of the human mind, and there- 
fore the idea of this idea does not adequately express 
the nature of the human mind, nor involve an adequate 
knowledge of it. 

From this it is evident that the human mind, when 
it perceives things in the common order of Nature, 
has no adequate knowledge of itself nor of its own 
body, nor of external bodies, but only a confused and 
mutilated knowledge; for the mind does not know 
itself unless in so far as it perceives the ideas of the 
modifications of the body. Moreover, it does not per- 
ceive its body unless through those same ideas of the 
modifications by means of which alone it perceives 
external bodies. Therefore in so far as it possesses 
these ideas it possesses an adequate knowledge neither 
of itself, nor of its body, nor of external bodies, but 
merely a mutilated and confused knowledge. 

I say expressly that the mind has no adequate knowl- 
edge of itself, nor of its body, nor of external bodies, 
but only a confused knowledge, as often as it perceives 
things in the common order of Nature, that is to say, as 
often as it is determined to the contemplation of this 


NATURE AND EXTENT OF KNOWLEDGE 187 


or that externally—namely, by a chance coincidence, 
and not as often as it is determined internally—for the 
reason that it contemplates several things at once, and 
is determined to understand in what they differ, agree, 
or oppose one another; for whenever it is internally 
disposed in this or in any other way, it then contem- 
plates things clearly and distinctly. 


Ill 


The duration of our body does not depend upon its 
essence, nor upon the absolute nature of God, but the 
body is determined to existence and action by causes 
which also are determined by others to existence and 
action in a certain and determinate manner, whilst 
these, again, are determined by others, and so on ad 
infinitum. The duration, therefore, of our body de- 
pends upon the common order of Nature and the con- 
stitution of things. But an adequate knowledge of the 
way in which things are constituted, exists in God in so 
far as He possesses the ideas of all things, and not in 
so far as He possesses only the idea of the human 
bdody. Therefore the knowledge of the duration of 
our body is altogether inadequate in God, in so far as 
He is only considered as constituting the nature of the 
human mind, that is to say, this knowledge in our 
mind is altogether inadequate. 

Each individual thing, like the human body, must 
be determined to existence and action by another indi- 
vidual thing in a certain and determinate manner, and 
this again by another, and so on ad infinitum. But we 
have demonstrated in the preceding proposition, from 


188 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


this common property of individual things, that we 
have but a very inadequate knowledge of the duration 
of our own body; therefore the same conclusion is to 
be drawn about the duration of individual things, that 
is to say, that we can have but a very inadequate 
knowledge of it. 

Hence it follows that all individual things are con- 
tingent and corruptible, for we can have no adequate 
knowledge concerning their duration and this is what 
is to be understood by us as their contingency and 
capability of corruption; for there is no other contin- 
gency but this. 


The Mind’s Knowledge of God 


The idea of an individual thing actually existing 
necessarily involves both the essence and existence of 
the thing itself. But individual things cannot be con- 
ceived without God, and since God is their cause in so 
far as He is considered under that attribute of which 
they are modes, their ideas must necessarily involve the 
conception of that attribute, or, in other words, must 
involve the eternal and infinite essence of God. 

By existence is to be understood here not duration, 
that is, existence considered in the abstract, as if it 
were a certain kind of quantity, but I speak of the 
nature itself of the existence which is assigned to in- 
dividual things, because from the eternal necessity of 
the nature of God infinite numbers of things follow in 
infinite ways. I repeat, that I speak of the existence 
itself of individual things in so far as they are in God. 
For although each indvidual thing is determined by 
another individual thing to existence in a certain way, 


NATURE AND EXTENT OF KNOWLEDGE 189 


the force nevertheless by which each thing perseveres 
in its existence follows from the eternal necessity of the 
nature of God. 

The demonstration of the preceding proposition is 
universal, and whether a thing be considered as a 
part or as a whole, its idea, whether it be of a part or 
whole, will involve the eternal and infinite essence of 
God. Therefore that which gives a knowledge of the 
eternal and infinite essence of God is common to all, 
and is equally in the part and in the whole. This 
knowledge therefore will be adequate. 

The human mind possesses ideas by which it per- 
ceives itself and its own body, together with external 
bodies, as actually existing. Therefore it possesses 
an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite es- 
sence of God. 

Hence we see that the infinite essence and the eter- 
nity of God are known to all; and since all things are 
in God and are conceived through Him, it follows that 
we can deduce from this knowledge many things which 
we can know adequately, and that we can thus form 
that third sort of knowledge. The reason why we do 
not possess a knowledge of God as distinct as that 
which we have of common notions is, that we cannot 
imagine God as we can bodies; and because we have 
attached the name God to the images of things which 
we are in the habit of seeing, an error we can hardly 
avoid, inasmuch as we are continually affected by 
external bodies. 

Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the appli- 
cation of the wrong names to things. For if a man 
says that the lines which are drawn from the center of 
the circle to the circumference are not equal, he under- 


190 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


stands by the circle, at all events for the time, something 
else than mathematicians understand by it. So when 
men make errors in calculation, the numbers which are 
in their minds are not those which are upon the paper. 
As far as their mind is concerned there is no error, al- 
though it seems as if there were, because we think that 
the numbers in their minds are those which are upon 
the paper. If we did not think so, we should not 
believe them to be in error. For example, when I 
lately heard a man complaining that his court had 
flown into one of his neighbor’s fowls, I understood 
what he meant, and therefore did not imagine him to 
be in error. This is the source from which so many 
controversies arise—that men either do not properly 
explain their own thoughts, or do not properly interpret 
those of other people; for, in truth, when they most 
contradict one another, they either think the same 
things or something different, so that those things which 
they suppose to be errors and absurdities in another 
person are not so. 


CHAPTER XI 
DETERMINISM AND MORALS 


The Mind Is Necessarily Determined 


THE mind is a certain and determinate mode of 
thought, and therefore it cannot be the free cause of 
its own actions, or have an absolute faculty of willing 
or not willing, but must be determined to this or that 
volition by a cause which is also determined by another 
cause, and this again by another, and so on ad 
infinitum, 

In the same manner it is demonstrated that in the 
mind there exists no absolute faculty of understanding, 
desiring, loving, etc. These and the like faculties, 
therefore, are either altogether fictitious, or else are 
nothing but metaphysical or universal entities, which 
we are in the habit of forming from individual cases. 
The intellect and will, therefore, are related to this or 
chat idea or volition as rockiness is related to this or 
that rock, or as man is related to Peter or Paul. The 
reason why men imagine themselves to be free we have 
already explained. 


Faculty Psychology Fallacious 


Before, however, I advance any further, I must ob- 
serve that by the will I understand a faculty of affirm- 


ing or denying, but not a desire; a faculty, I say, by 
191 


LOZ THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


which the mind affirms or denies that which is true or 
false, and not a desire by which the mind seeks a thing 
or turns away from it. But now that we have demon- 
strated that these faculties are universal notions which 
are not distinguishable from the individual notions 
from which they are formed, we must now inquire 
whether the volitions themselves are anything more 
than the ideas of things. We must inquire, I say, 
whether in the mind there exists any other affirmation 
or negation than that which the idea involves in so 
far as itis an idea. For this purpose see the following, 
so that thought may not fall into pictures. For by 
ideas I do not understand the images which are formed 
at the back of the eye, or, if you please, in the middle 
of the brain, but rather the conceptions of thought. 

In the mind there exists no absolute faculty of willing 
or not willing. Only individual volitions exist, that is 
to say, this and that affirmation and this and that ne- 
gation. Let us conceive, therefore, any individual vo- 
lition, that is, any mode of thought, by which the mind 
affirms that the three angles of a triangle are equal to 
two right angles. This affirmation involves the con- 
ception or idea of the triangle, that is to say, without 
it the affirmation cannot be conceived. For to say that 
A must involve the conception B, is the same as saying 
that A cannot be conceived without B. Moreover, 
without the idea of the triangle this affirmation cannot 
be, and it can therefore neither be nor be conceived 
without that idea. But this idea of the triangle must 
involve this same affirmation that its three angles are 
equal to two right angles. Therefore also, vice versa, 
this idea of the triangle without this affirmation can 


DETERMINISM AND MORALS 193 


neither be nor be conceived. Therefore this affirma- 
tion pertains to the essence of the idea of the triangle, 
nor is it anything else besides this. Whatever too we 
have said of this volition (since it has been taken 
arbitrarily) applies to all other volitions, that is to say, 
they are nothing but ideas. 

The will and the intellect are nothing but the indi- 
vidual volitions and ideas themselves. But the indi- 
vidual volition and idea are one and the same. There- 
fore the will and the intellect are one and the same. 


False Doctrines about Error Exposed 


I have thus removed what is commonly thought to be 
the cause of error. It has been proved above that 
falsity consists solely in the privation which mutilated 
and confused ideas involve. A false idea, therefore, 
in so far as it is false, does not involve certitude. Con- 
sequently, when we say that a man assents to what is 
false and does not doubt it, we do not say that he is 
certain, but merely that he does not doubt, that is to 
say, that he assents to what is false, because there 
are no causes sufficient to make his imagination waver. 
Although, therefore, a man may be supposed to adhere 
to what is false, we shall never on that account say 
that he is certain. For by certitude we understand 
something positive, and not the privation of doubt; 
but by the privation of certitude we understand falsity. 

If the preceding proposition, however, is to be more 
clearly comprehended, a word or two must be added; 
it yet remains also that I should answer the objections 
which may be brought against our doctrine, and finally, 
in order to remove all scruples, I have thought it worth 


194 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


while to indicate some of its advantages. I say some, 
as the principal advantages will be better understood: 
later. 

I begin, therefore, with the first, and I warn my 
readers carefully to distinguish between an idea or 
conception of the mind and the images of things formed 
by our imagination. Secondly, it is necessary that we 
should distinguish between ideas and the words by 
which things are signified. For it is because these 
three things, images, words, and ideas, are by many 
people either altogether confounded or not distin- 
guished with sufficient accuracy and care that such 
ignorance exists about this doctrine of the will, so 
necessary to be known both for the purposes of specu- 
lation and for the wise government of life. Those who 
think that ideas consist of images, which are formed 
in us by meeting with external bodies, persuade them- 
selves that those ideas of things of which we can form 
no similar image are not ideas, but mere fancies con- 
structed by the free power of the will. They look upon 
ideas, therefore, as dumb pictures on a tablet, and 
being prepossessed with this prejudice, they do not see 
that an idea, in so far as it is an idea, involves affirma- 
tion or negation. Again, those who confound words 
with the idea, or with the affirmation itself which the 
idea involves, think that they can will contrary to their 
perception, because they affirm or deny something in 
words alone contrary to their perception. It will be 
easy for us, however, to divest ourselves of these preju- 
dices if we attend to the nature of thought, which in 
no way involves the conception of extension, and by 
doing this we clearly see that an idea, since it is a mode 


DETERMINISM AND MORALS 195 


of thought, is not an image of anything, nor does it 
consist of words. For the essence of words and images 
is formed of bodily motions alone, which involve in no 
way whatever the conception of thought. 

Let thus much suffice under this head. I pass on 
now to the objections to which I have already alluded. 


Freedom of the Will 


The first is, that it is supposed to be certain that the 
will extends itself more widely than the intellect, and is 
therefore different from it. The reason why men sup- 
pose that the will extends itself more widely than the 
intellect is because they say they have discovered that 
they do not need a larger faculty of assent—that is to 
say, of affirmation—and denial than that which they 
now have for the purpose of assenting to an infinite 
number of other things which we do not perceive, but 
that they do need a greater faculty for understanding 
them. The will, therefore, is distinguished from the 
intellect, the latter being finite, the former infinite. 
The second objection which can be made is that there is 
nothing which experience seems to teach more clearly 
than the possibility of suspending our judgment, so as 
not to assent to the things we perceive; and we are 
strengthened in this opinion because no one is said to 
be deceived in so far as he perceives a thing, but only 
in so far as he assents to it or dissents from it. For 
example, a man who imagines a winged horse does not 
therefore admit the existence of a winged horse; that 
is to say, he is not necessarily deceived, unless he grants 
at the same time that a winged horse exists. Experi- 
ence, therefore, seems to show nothing more plainly 


196 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


than that the will or faculty of assent is free, and dif- 
ferent from the faculty of the intellect. 

Thirdly, it may be objected that one affirmation does 
not seem to contain more reality than another; that is 
to say, it does not appear that we need a greater power 
for affirming a thing to be true which is true than for 
affirming a thing to be true which is false. Neverthe- 
less, we observe that one idea contains more reality or 
perfection than another, for as some objects are nobler 
than others, in the same proportion are their ideas more 
perfect. It appears indisputable, therefore, that there 
is a difference between the will and the intellect. 

Fourthly, it may be objected that if a man does not 
act from freedom of the will, what would he do if he 
were in a state of equilibrium, like the ass of Buri- 
danus? Would he not perish from hunger and thirst? 
and if this be granted, do we not seem to conceive him 
as a statue of a man or as an ass? If I deny that he 
would thus perish, he will consequently determine him- 
self and possess the power of going where he likes and 
doing what he likes. 

There may be other objections besides these, 
but as I am not bound to discuss what every one 
may dream, I shall therefore make it my business to 
answer as briefly as possible those only which I have 
mentioned. 

In reply to the first objection, I grant that the will 
extends itself more widely than the intellect, if by the 
intellect we understand only clear and distinct ideas; 
but I deny that the will extends itself more widely than 
the perceptions or the faculty of conception; nor, in- 
deed, do I see why the faculty of will should be said 


DETERMINISM AND MORALS 197 


to be infinite any more than the faculty of feeling; for 
as by the same faculty of will we can affirm an infinite 
number of things (one after the other, for we cannot 
affirm an infinite number of things at once), so also by 
the same faculty of feeling we can feel or perceive 
(one after another) an infinite number of bodies. If 
it be said that there are an infinite number of things 
which we cannot perceive, I reply that such things as 
these we can reach by no thought, and consequently 
by no faculty of will. But it is said that if God wished 
us to perceive those things, it would be necessary for 
Him to give us a larger faculty of perception, but not 
a larger faculty of will than He has already given us, 
which is the same thing as saying that if God wished 
us to understand an infinite number of other beings, 
it would be necessary for Him to give us a greater 
intellect, but not a more universal idea of being (in 
order to embrace that infinite number of beings), than 
He has given us. For we have shown that the will is a 
Universal, or the idea by which we explain all indi- 
vidual volitions, that is to say, that which is common 
to them all. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, 
that those who believe this common or universal idea 
of all the volitions to be a faculty should say that it 
extends itself infinitely beyond the limits of the in- 
tellect. For the universal is predicated of one or of 
many, or of an infinite number of individuals. 

The second objection I answer by denying that we 
have free power of suspending judgment. For when 
we say that a person suspends judgment, we only say 
in other words that he sees that he does not perceive 
the thing adequately. The suspension of the judgment, 


198 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


therefore, is in truth a perception and not free will. 

In order that this may be clearly understood, let us 
take the case of a boy who imagines a horse and per- 
ceives nothing else. Since this imagination involves the 
existence of the horse, and the boy does not perceive 
anything which negates its existence, he will neces- 
sarily contemplate it as present, nor will he be able 
to doubt its existence although he may not be certain 
of it. This is a.thing which we daily experience in 
dreams, nor do I believe that there is any one who 
thinks that he has the free power during dreams of 
suspending his judgment upon those things which he 
dreams, and of causing himself not to dream those 
things which he dreams that he sees; and yet in dreams 
it nevertheless happens that we suspend our judgment, 
for we dream that we dream. 

I grant, it is true, that no man is deceived in so far 
as he perceives; that is to say, I grant that mental 
images considered in themselves involve no error; but 
I deny that a man in so far as he perceives affirms 
nothing. For what else is it to perceive a winged horse 
than to affirm of the horse that it has wings? For if 
the mind perceived nothing else but this winged horse, 
it would regard it as present, nor would it have any 
reason for doubting its existence, nor any power of 
refusing assent to it, unless the image of the winged 
horse be joined to an idea which negates its existence, 
or the mind perceives that the idea of the winged 
horse which it has is inadequate. In either of the two 
latter cases it will necessarily deny or doubt the exis- 
tence of the horse. 

With regard to the third objection, what has been 


a 


DETERMINISM AND MORALS 199 


said will perhaps be a sufficient answer—namely, that 
the will is something universal, which is predicated of 
all ideas, and that it signifies that only which is common 
to them all, that is to say, affirmation. Its adequate 
essence, therefore, in so far as it is thus considered in 
the abstract, must be in every idea, and in this sense 
only must it be the same in all; but not in so far as it 
is considered as constituting the essence of an idea, for 
so far, the individual affirmations differ just as the ideas 
differ. For example, the affirmation which the idea of 
a circle involves differs from that which the idea of a 
triangle involves, just as the idea of a circle differs 
from the idea of a triangle. Again, I absolutely deny 
that we need a power of thinking in order to affirm 
that to be true which is true, equal to that which we 
need in order to affirm that to be true which is false. 
For these two affirmations, if we look to the mind, are 
related to one another as being and non-being, for there 
is nothing positive in ideas which constitutes a form of 
falsity. 

Here therefore particularly is it to be observed how 
easily we are deceived when we confuse universals with 
individuals, and the entities of reason and abstractions 
with realities. 

With regard to the fourth objection, I say that I 
entirely grant that if a man were placed in such a state 
of equilibrium he would perish of hunger and thirst, 
supposing he perceived nothing but hunger and thirst, 
and the food and drink which were equidistant from 
him. If you ask me whether such a man would not 
be thought an ass rather than a man, I reply that I do 
not know; nor do I know what ought to be thought of 


200 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


a man who hangs himself, or of children, fools, and 
madmen. 


The Independence of Mind and Body 


All modes of thought have God for a cause in so far 
as He is a thinking thing, and not in so far as He is 
manifested by any other attribute. That which deter- 
mines the mind to thought, therefore, is a mode of 
thought and not of extension, that is to say, it is not 
the body. Again, the motion and rest of the body must 
be derived from some other body, which has also been 
determined to motion or rest by another, and, abso- 
lutely, whatever arises in the body must arise from 
God, in so far as He is considered as affected by some 
mode of extension, and not in so far as He is considered 
as affected by any mode of thought, that is to say, 
whatever arises in the body cannot arise from the mind, 
which is a mode of thought. Therefore, the body can- 
not determine the mind to thought, neither can the 
mind determine the body to motion nor rest, nor to 
anything else, if there be anything else. 

This proposition will be better understood from what 
has been said, that is to say, that the mind and the 
body are one and the same thing, conceived at one time 
under the attribute of thought, and at another under 
that of extension. For this reason, the order or con- 
catenation of things is one, whether nature be con- 
ceived under this or under that attribute, and conse- 
quently the order of the actions and passions of our 
body is coincident in Nature with the order of the ac- 
tions and passions of the mind. 


DETERMINISM AND MORALS 201 


Although these things are so, and no ground for 
doubting remains, I scarcely believe, nevertheless, that, 
without a proof derived from experience, men will be 
induced calmly to weigh what has been said, so firmly 
are they persuaded that, solely at the bidding of the 
mind, the body moves or rests, and does a number of 
things which depend upon the will of the mind alone, 
and upon the power of thought. For what the body 
can do no one has hitherto determined, that is to say, 
experience has taught no one hitherto what the body, 
without being determined by the mind, can do and 
what it cannot do from the laws of Nature alcne, in 
so far as Nature is considered merely as corporeal. 
For no one as yet has understood the structure of the 
body so accurately as to be able to explain all its func- 
tions, not to mention the fact that many things are 
observed in brutes which far surpass human sagacity, 
and that sleep-walkers in their sleep do very many 
things which they dare not do when awake; all this 
showing that the body itself can do many things from 
the laws of its own nature alone at which the mind 
belonging to that body is amazed. 

Again, nobody knows by what means or by what 
method the mind moves the body, nor how many de- 
grees of motion it can communicate to the body, nor 
with what speed it can move the body. So that it fol- 
lows that when men say that this or that action of the 
body springs from the mind which has commanded over 
the body, they do not know what they say, and they 
do nothing but confess with pretentious words that they 
know nothing about the cause of the action, and see 
nothing in it to wonder at. 


202 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


But they will say, that whether they know or do 
not know by what means the mind moves the body, it 
is nevertheless in their experience that if the mind 
were not fit for thinking the body would be inert. They 
say, again, it is in their experience that the mind alone 
has power both to speak and be silent, and to do many 
other things which they therefore think to be dependent 
on a decree of the mind. 

But with regard to the first assertion, I ask them if 
experience does not also teach that if the body be 
sluggish the mind at the same time is not fit for think- 
ing? When the body is asleep, the mind slumbers 
with it, and has not the power to think, as it has when 
the body is awake. Again, I believe that all have dis- 
covered that the mind is not always equally fitted for 
thinking about the same subject, but in proportion to 
the fitness of the body for this or that image to be 
excited in it will the mind be better fitted to contem- 
plate this or that object. But my opponents will say, 
that from the laws of Nature alone, in so far as it Is 
considered to be corporeal merely, it cannot be that 
the causes of architecture, painting, and things of this 
sort, which are the results of human art alone, could 
be deduced, and that the human body, unless it were 
determined and guided by the mind, would not be able 
to build a temple. I have already shown, however, 
that they do not know what the body can do, nor 
what can be deduced from the consideration of its 
nature alone, and that they find that many things are 
done merely by the laws of Nature which they would 
never have believed to be possible without the direction 
of the mind, as, for example, those things which sleep- 


DETERMINISM AND MORALS 203 


walkers do in their sleep, and at which they themselves 
are astonished when they wake. I adduce also here the 
structure itself of the human body, which so greatly 
surpasses in workmanship all those things which are 
constructed by human art, not to mention what I 
have already proved, that an infinitude of things fol- 
lows from Nature under whatever attribute it may be 
considered. 

With regard to the second point, I should say that 
human. affairs would be much more happily conducted 
if it were equally in the power of men to be silent and 
to speak. But experience shows over and over again 
that there 1s nothing which men have less power over 
than the tongue, and that there is nothing which they 
are less able to do than to govern their appetities, so 
that many persons believe that we do those things only 
with freedom which we seek indifferently; as the desire 
for such things can easily be lessened by the recol- 
lection of another thing which we frequently call to 
mind; it being impossible, on the other hand, to deo 
those things with freedom which we seek with such 
ardor that the recollection of another thing is un- 
able to mitigate it. 

But if, however, we had not found out that we do 
many things which we afterwards repent, and that 
when agitated by conflicting emotions we see that which 
is better and follow that which is worse, nothing would 
hinder us from believing that we do everything with 
freedom. Thus the infant believes that it is by free 
will that it seeks the breast; the angry boy believes 
that by free will he wishes vengeance; the timid man 
thinks it is with free will he seeks flight; the drunkard 


204 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


believes that by a free command of his mind he speaks 
the things which when sober he wishes he had left 
unsaid. ‘Thus the madman, the chatterer, the boy, and 
others of the same kind, all believe that they speak by 
a free command of the mind, whilst, in truth, they 
have no power to restrain the impulse which they have 
to speak, so that experience itself, no less than reason, 
clearly teaches that men believe themselves to be free 
simply because thy are conscious of thir own actions, 
knowing nothing of the causes by which they are deter- 
mined. It‘ teaches, too, that the decrees of the mind 
are nothing but the appetites themselves, which differ, 
therefore, according to the different temper of the 


1, ..I1 say that a thing is free, which exists and acts solely by 
the necessity of its own nature. Thus also God understands Himself 
and all things freely, because it follows solely from the necessity of 
His nature that He should understand all things. You see I do not 
place freedom in free decision, but in free necessity. However, let 
us descend to created things, which are all determined by external 
causes to exist and operate in a given determinate manner. In 
order that this may be clearly understood, let us conceive a very 
simple thing. For instance, a stone receives from the impulsion of 
an external cause a certain quantity of motion, by virtue of which 
it continues to move after the impulsion given by the external cause 
has ceased. The permanence of the stone’s motion is constrained, 
not necessary because it must be defined by the impulsion of an 
external cause. What is true of the stone is true of an individual, 
however complicated its nature, or varied its functions, inasmuch as 
every individual thing is necessarily determined by some external 
cause to exist and operate in a fixed and determinate manner. 

Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, 
should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavoring, 
as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious 
merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe 
itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in 
motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, 
which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the 
fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of 
the causes whereby that desire has been determined ... 

1 From a letter to G. H. Schaller (1674). 


DETERMINISM AND MORALS 205 


body. For every man determines all things from his 
emotion; those who are agitated by contrary emotions 
do not know what they want, whilst those who are 
agitated by no emotion are easily driven hither and 
thither. 

All this plainly shows that the decree of the mind, 
the appetite, and determination of the body are coin- 
cident in Nature, or rather that they are one and the 
same thing, which, when it is considered under the 
attribute of thought and manifested by that, is called 
a decree, and when it is considered under the attribute 
of extension and is deduced from the laws of motion 
and rest, is called a determination. 

This, however, will be better understood as we go on, 
for there is another thing which I wish to be observed 
here—that we cannot by a mental decree do a thing 
unless we recollect it. We cannot speak a word, for 
instance, unless we recollect it. But it is not in the 
free power of the mind either to recollect a thing or to 
forget it. It is believed, therefore, that the power of 
the mind extends only thus far—that from a mental 
decree we can speak or be silent about a thing only 
when we recollect it. But when we dream that we 
speak, we believe that we do so from a free decree of 
the mind; and yet we do not speak, or, if we do, it is 
the result of a spontaneous motion of the body. We 
dream, again, that we are concealing things, and that 
we do this by virtue of a decree of the mind like that 
by which, when awake, we are silent about things we 
know. We dream, again, that from a decree of the 
mind, we do some things which we should not dare 
to do when awake. And I should like to know, there- 


206 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


fore, whether there are two kinds of decrees in the 
mind—one belonging to dreams and the other free. 
If this be too great nonsense, we must necessarily 
grant that this decree of the mind, which is believed 
to be free, is not distinguishable from the imagination 
or memory, and is nothing but the affirmation which 
the idea necessarily involves in so far as it is an idea. 
These decrees of the mind, therefore, arise in the mind 
by the same necessity as the ideas of things actually 
existing. Consequently, those who believe that they 
speak, or are silent, or do anything else from a free 
decree of the mind, dream with their eyes open. 


The Moral Values of Determinism 


I 


It remains for me now to show what service to our 
own lives a knowledge of this doctrine is. This we 
shall easily understand from the remarks which fol- 
low. Notice— 

1. It is of service in so far as it teaches us that we 
do everything by the will of God alone, and that we 
are partakers of the divine nature in proportion as our 
actions become more and more perfect and we more 
and more understand God. This doctrine, therefore, 
besides giving repose in every way to the soul, has also 
this advantage, that it teaches us in what our highest 
happiness or blessedness consists, namely, in the knowl- 
edge of God alone, by which we are drawn to do those 
things only which love and piety persuade. Hence we 
clearly see how greatly those stray from the true 
estimation of virtue who expect to be distinguished 


DETERMINISM AND MORALS 207 


by God with the highest rewards for virtue and the 
noblest actions as if for the completest servitude, just 
as if virtue itself and the service of God were not 
happiness itself and the highest liberty. 

2. It is of service to us in so far as it teaches us 
how we ought to behave with regard to the things of 
fortune, or those which are not in our power, that is 
to say, which do not follow from our own nature; for 
it teaches us with equal mind to wait for and bear 
each form of fortune, because we know that all things 
follow from the eternal decree of God, according to 
that same necessity by which it follows from the es- 
sence of a triangle that its three angles are equal to 
two right angles. 

3. This doctrine contributes to the welfare of our 
social existence, since it teaches us to hate no one, to 
despise no one, to mock no one, to be angry with no 
one, and to envy no one. It teaches every one, more- 
over, to be content with his own, and to be helpful to 
his neighbor, not from any womanish pity, from par- 
tiality, or superstition, but by the guidance of reason 
alone, according to the demand of time and circum- 
stance, as I shall show. 

4. This doctrine contributes not a little to the ad- 
vantage of common society, in so far as it teaches us by 
what means citizens are to be governed and led; not 
in order that they may be slaves, but that they may 
freely do those things which are best. 


II 
At* last I see, what it was that you begged me not 


1 From a letter to Henry Oldenburg (Dec., 1675). 


208 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


to publish. However, as it forms the chief foundation 
of everything in the treatise * which I intend to bring 
out, I should like briefly to explain here, in what sense 
I assert that a fatal necessity presides over all things 
and actions. 

God I in no wise subject to fate: I conceive that 
all things follow with inevitable necessity from the 
nature of God, in the same way as every one conceives 
that it follows from God’s nature that God understands 
Himself. This latter consequence all admit to follow 
necessarily from the divine nature, yet no one conceives 
that God is under the compulsion of any fate, but that 
He understands Himsetf quite freely, though neces- 
sarily. 

Further, this inevitable necessity in things does 
away neither with divine nor human laws. The prin- 
ciples of morality, whether they receive from God 
Himself the form of laws or institutions, or whether 
they do not, are still divine and salutary; whether we 
receive the good, which flows from virtue and the 
divine love, as from God in the capacity of a judge, 
or as from the necessity of the divine nature, it will 
in either case be equally desirable; on the other hand, 
the evils following from wicked actions and passions 
are not less to be feared because they are necessary 
consequences.” Lastly, in our actions, whether they 


1The Ethics —Ep. 

2TI received on Saturday last your very short letter dated 15th 
Nov. In it you merely indicated the points in the theological 
treatise which have given pain to readers, whereas I had hoped to 
learn from it what were the opinions which militated against the 
practice of religious virtue. ...I make this chief distinction be- 
tween religion and superstition; the latter is founded on ignorance, 
the former on knowledge. This, I take it, is the reason why 


DETERMINISM AND MORALS 209 


be necessary or contingent, we are led by hope and 
fear. 

Men are only without excuse before God, because 
they are in God’s power, as clay is in the hands of the 
potter, who from the same lump makes vessels, some 
to honor, some to dishonor. . . 

* When I said in my former letter that we are in- 
excusable, because we are in the power of God, like 
clay in the hands of the potter, I meant to be under- 
stood in the sense that no one can bring a complaint 
against God for having given him a weak nature, or 
infirm spirit. A circle might as well complain to God 
for not being endowed with the properties of a sphere, 
or a child who is tortured, say, with stone, for not 
being given a healthy body, as a man of feeble spirit, 
because God has denied to him fortitude, and the true 
knowledge and love of the Deity, or because he is 
endowed with so weak a nature that he cannot check 
or moderate his desires. For the nature of each thing 
is only competent to do that which follows necessarily 
from its given cause. 

That every man cannot be brave, and that we can 
no more command for ourselves a healthy body than a 
healthy mind, nobody can deny, without giving the lie 
to experience, as well as to reason. ‘But,’ you urge, 
“if men sin by nature, they are excusable”; but you 


Christians are distinguished from the rest of the world, not by 
faith, nor by charity, nor by the other fruits of the Holy Spirit, 
but solely by their opinions, inasmuch as they defend their cause, 
like every one else, by miracles, that is, by ignorance, which is the 
source of all malice. Thus they turn a faith, which may be true, 
into superstition. From a letter to Henry Oldenburg (Dec., 1675). 

1 From a letter to Henry Oldenburg (Feb. 7, 1676). 


210 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


do not state the conclusion you draw, whether that 
God cannot be angry with them, or that they are 
worthy of blessedness—that is, of the knowledge and 
love of God. If you say the former, I fully admit that 
God cannot be angry, and that all things are done in 
accordance with His will; but I deny that all men 
ought, therefore, to be blessed—men may be excusable, 
and nevertheless, be without blessedness and afflicted 
in many ways.’ A horse is excusable for being a horse 
and not a man; but, nevertheless, he must needs be 
a horse and not a man. He who goes mad from the 
bite of a dog is excusable, yet he is rightly suffocated. 
Lastly, he who cannot govern his desires, and keep 
them in check with the fear of the laws, though his 
weakness may be excusable, yet he cannot enjoy with 
contentment, the knowledge and love of God, but 
necessarily perishes. 

1A mouse no less than an angel, and sorrow no less than joy 


depend on God; yet a mouse is not a kind of angel, neither is sorrow 
a kind of joy. From a letter to Wm. Blyenbergh (March 13, 1665). 


CHAPTER XII 


THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE 
EMOTIONS 


Introductory 


Most persons who have written about the emotions 
and man’s conduct of life seem to discuss, not the 
natural things which follow the common laws of Na- 
ture, but things which are outside her. They seem in- 
deed to consider man in Nature as a kingdom within a 
kingdom. For they believe that man disturbs rather 
than follows her order; that he has an absolute power 
over his own actions; and that he is altogether self- 
determined. They then proceed to attribute the cause 
of human weakness and changeableness, not to the 
common power of Nature, but to some vice of human 
nature, which they therefore bewail, laugh at, mock, 
or, aS is more generally the case, detest; whilst he who 
knows how to revile most eloquently or subtilely the 
weakness of the mind is looked upon as divine. 

It is true that very eminent men have not been want- 
ing, to whose labor and industry we confess ourselves 
much indebted, who have written many excellent things 
about the right conduct of life, and who have given to 
mortals counsels full of prudence. But no one so far 
as I know has determined the nature and strength of 


the emotions, and what the mind is able to do towards 
211 


Zi THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


controlling them. I remember, indeed, that the cele- 
brated Descartes, although he believed that the mind 
is absolute master over its own actions, tried neverthe- 
less to explain by their first causes human emotions, 
and at the same time to show the way by which the 
mind could obtain absolute power over them. But in 
my opinion he has shown nothing but the acuteness of 
his great intellect, as I shall make evident in the proper 
place, for I wish to return to those who prefer to de- 
test and scoff at human affects and actions than under- 
stand them. 

To such as these it will doubtless seem a marvelous 
thing for me to endeavor to treat by a geometrical 
method the vices and follies of men, and to desire by 
a sure method to demonstrate those things which these 
people cry out against as being opposed to reason, or 
as being vanities, absurdities, and monstrosities. The 
following is my reason for so doing. Nothing happens 
in Nature which can be attributed to any vice of Na- 
ture, for she is always the same and everywhere one. 
Her virtue is the same, and her power of acting; that is 
to say, her laws and rules, according to which all things 
are and are changed from form to form, are everywhere 
and always the same; so that there must also be one 
and the same method of understanding the nature of 
all things whatsoever, that is to say, by the universal 
laws and rules of Nature. The emotions, therefore, of 
hatred, anger, envy, considered in themselves, follow 
from the same necessity and virtue of Nature as other 
individual things; they have therefore certain causes 
through which they are to be understood, and certain 
properties which are just as worthy of being known 


ORIGIN AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS 213 


as the properties of any other thing in the contempla- 
tion alone of which we delight. I shall, therefore, pur- 
sue the same method in considering the nature and 
strength of the emotions and the power of the mind 
over them which I pursued in our previous discussion 
of God and the mind, and I shall consider human ac- 
tions and appetites just as if I were considering lines, 
planes or bodies. 


Definitions 


I—I call that an adequate cause whose effect can 
be clearly and distinctly perceived by means of the 
cause. I call that an inadequate or partial cause whose 
effect cannot be understood by means of the cause 
alone. 

If.—I say that we act when anything is done, either 
within us or without us, of which we are the adequate 
cause, that is to say (by the preceding Definition), 
when from our nature anything follows, either within 
us or without us, which by that nature alone can be 
clearly and distinctly understood. On the other hand, 
I say that we suffer when anything is done within 
us, or when anything follows from our nature, of which 
we are not the cause excepting partially. 

III.—By emotion I understand the modifications of 
the body, by which the power of acting of the body it- 
self is increased, diminished, helped, or hindered, 
together with the ideas of these modifications. 

If, therefore, we can be the adequate cause of any 
of these modifications, I understand the emotion to be 
an action, otherwise it is a passion. 


214 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


Postulates 


1.—The human body can be affected in many ways 
by which its power of acting is increased or diminished, 
and also in other ways which make its power of acting 
neither greater nor less. 

2.—The human body is capable of suffering many 
changes, and, nevertheless, can retain the impressions 
or traces of objects, and consequently the same images 
of things. 


The Two States of Mind: Active and Passive 


In every human mind some ideas are adequate, and 
others mutilated and confused. But the ideas which 
in any mind are adequate are adequate in God in so 
far as He forms the essence of that mind, while those 
again which are inadequate in the mind are also ade- 
quate in God, not in so far as He contains the essence 
of that mind only, but in so far as He contains the 
ideas of other things at the same time in Himself. 
Again, from any given idea some effect must neces- 
sarily follow, of which God is the adequate cause, not 
in so far as He is infinite, but in so far as He is con- 
sidered as affected with the given idea. But of that 
effect of which God is the cause, in so far as He is 
affected by an idea which is adequate in any mind, 
that same mind is the adequate cause. Our mind, 
therefore, in so far as it has adequate ideas, neces- 
sarily at times acts. Again, if there be anything which 
necessarily follows from an idea which is adequate in 
God, not in so far as He contains within Himself the 
mind of one man only, but also, together with this, the 


ORIGIN AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS 215 


ideas * of other things, then the mind of that man is 
not the adequate cause of that thing, but is only its 
partial cause, and therefore, in so far as the mind has 
inadequate ideas, it necessarily at times suffers. 


The Basic Endeavor of All Things 


Individual things are modes by which the attributes 
of God are expressed in a certain and determinate 
manner; that is to say, they are things which express 
in a certain and determinate manner the power of God, 
by which He is and acts. A thing, too, has nothing in 
itself through which it can be destroyed, or which can 
negate its existence,’ but, on the contrary, it is op- 
posed to everything which could negate its existence. 
Therefore, in so far as it can and is in itself, it en- 
deavors to persevere in its own being. 


The Three Primary Emotions 
I 
Desire 


The essence of the mind is composed of adequate and 
inadequate ideas (as we have shown), and therefore 
both in so far as it has the former and in so far as it 


1 Hence it follows that the mind Is subject to passions in propor- 
tion to the number of inadequate ideas which it has, and that it 
acts in proportion to the number of adequate ideas which it has. 

2 This proposition is self-evident, for the definition of any given 
thing affirms and does not deny the existence of the thing; that is 
to say, it posits the essence of the thing and does not negate it. So 
long, therefore, as we attend only to the thing itself, and not to ex- 
ternal causes, we shall discover nothing in it which can destroy it. 


216 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


has the latter, it endeavors to persevere in its being, 
and endeavors to persevere in it for an indefinite time. 
But since the mind, through the ideas of the modifica- 
tions of the body, is necessarily conscious of itself, 
it is therefore conscious of its effort. 

This effort, when it is related to the mind alone, is 
called will, but when it is related at the same time both 
to the mind and the body, is called appetite, which is 
therefore nothing but the very essence of man, from 
the nature of which necessarily follow those things 
which promote his preservation, and thus he is de- 
termined to do those things. Hence there is no differ- 
ence between appetite and desire, unless in this par- 
ticular, that desire is generally related to men in so 
far as they are conscious of their appetites, and it 
may therefore be defined as appetite of which we are 
conscious. From what has been said it is plain, there- 
fore, that we neither strive for, wish, seek, nor desire 
anything because we think it to be good, but, on the 
contrary, we adjudge a thing to be good because we 
strive for, wish, seek. or desire it. 


II 
Joy and Sorrow 


{f anything increases, diminishes, helps, or limits 
our body’s power of action, the idea of that thing in- 
creases, diminishes, helps, or limits our mind’s power 
of thought. 

We thus see that the mind can suffer great changes, 
and can pass now to a greater and now to a lesser per- 
fection; these passions explaining to us the emotions of 


ORIGIN AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS 217 


joy and sorrow. By joy, therefore, in what follows, 
I shall understand the passion by which the mind 
passes to a greater perfection; by sorrow, on the other 
hand, the passion by which it passes to a less perfec- 
tion. The emotion of joy, related at the same time both 
to the mind and the body, I call pleasurable excitement 
(titillatio) or cheerfulness; that of sorrow I call pain 
or melancholy. It is, however, to be observed that 
pleasurable excitement and pain are related to a man 
when one of his parts is affected more than the others; 
cheerfulness and melancholy, on the other hand, when 
all parts are equally affected. What the nature of de- 
sire is I have explained; and besides these three—joy, 
sorrow, and desire—I know of no other primary emo- 
tion, the others springing from these. 


Definitions of the Principal Emotions 


I.— Desire is the essence itself of man in so far as it 
is conceived as determined to any action by any one 
of his modifications. 

Explanation—We have said above, that desire is 
appetite which is self-conscious, and that appetite is 
the essence itself of man in so far as it is determined 
to such acts as contribute to his preservation. But I 
have taken care to remark that in truth I cannot recog- 
nize any difference between human appetite and de- 
sire. For whether a man be conscious of his appe- 
tite or not, it remains one and the same appetite, and 
so, lest I might appear to be guilty of tautology, I have 
not explained desire by appetite, but have tried to give 
such a definition of desire as would include all the 
efforts of human nature to which we give the name of 


218 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


appetite, desire, will, or impulse. For I might have 
said that desire is the essence itself of man in so far 
as it is considered as determined to any action; but 
from this definition it would not follow that the mind 
could be conscious of its desire or appetite, and there- 
fore, in order that I might include the cause of this 
consciousness, it was necessary to add the words, in so 
far as it is concetved as determined to any action by 
any one of his modifications. For by a modification of 
the human essence we understand any constitution of 
that essence, whether it be innate, whether it be con- 
ceived through the attribute of thought alone or of 
extension alone, or whether it be related to both. By 
the word “desire,” therefore, I understand all the 
efforts, impulses, appetites, and volitions of a man, 
which vary according to his changing disposition, and 
not unfrequently are so opposed to one another that 
he is drawn hither and thither, and knows not whither 
he ought to turn. 

II. Joy is man’s passage from a less to a greater 
perfection. 

III. Sorrow is man’s passage from a greater to a 
less perfection. 

Explanation.—I say passage, for joy is not perfec- 
tion itself. If aman were born with the perfection to 
which he passes, he would possess it without the emo- 
tion of joy; a truth which will appear the more clearly 
from the emotion of sorrow, which is the opposite to 
joy. For that sorrow consists in the passage to a less 
perfection, but not in the less perfection itself, no one 
can deny, since in so far as a man shares any perfec- 
tion he cannot be sad. Nor can we say that sorrow 


—— 


ORIGIN AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS 219 


consists in the privation of a greater perfection for 
privation is nothing. But the emotion of sorrow is a 
reality, and it therefore must be the reality of the 
passage to a lesser perfection, or the reality by which 
man’s power of acting is diminished or limited. As 
for the definitions of cheerfulness, pleasurable excite- 
ment, melancholy, and grief, I pass these by, because 
they are related rather to the body than to the mind, 
and are merely different kinds of joy or of sorrow. 
IV. Astonishment is the imagination of an object 
in which the mind remains fixed because this particular 
imagination has no connection with others. 
Explanation—That which causes the mind from the 
contemplation of one thing immediately to pass to the 
thought of another is that the images of these things 
are connected one with the other, and are so arranged 
that the one follows the other; a process which can- 
not be conceived when the image of the thing is new, 
for the mind will be held in the contemplation of the 
same object until other causes determine it to think of 
other things. The imagination, therefore, considered 
in itself, of a new object is of the same character as 
other imaginations; and for this reason I do not class 
astonishment among the emotions, nor do I see any rea- 
son why I should do it, since this abstraction of the 
mind arises from no positive cause by which it is ab- 
stracted from other things, but merely from the ab- 
sence of any cause by which from the contemplation 
of one thing the mind is determined to think other 
things. I acknowledge, therefore, only three primi- 
tive or primary emotions, those of joy, sorrow, and de- 
sire; and the only reason which has induced me to 


220 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


speak of astonishment is, that it has been the custom to 
give other names to certain emotions derived from the 
three primitives whenever these emotions are related to 
objects at which we are astonished. This same reason 
also induces me to add the definition of contempt. 

V. Contempt is the imagination of an object which 
so little touches the mind that the mind is moved by 
the presence of the object to imagine those qualities 
which are not in it rather than those which are in it. 

The definitions of veneration and scorn I pass by 
here, because they give a name, so far as I know, to 
none of the emotions. 

VI. Love is joy with the accompanying idea of an 
external cause. 

Explanation.—This definition explains with sufficient 
clearness the essence of love; that which is given by 
some authors, who define love to be the will of the 
lover to unite himself to the beloved object, expresses 
not the essence of love but one of its properties. In 
as much as these authors have not seen with sufficient 
clearness what is the essence of love, they could not 
have a distinct conception of its properties, and con- 
sequently their definition has by everybody been 
thought very obscure. I must observe, however, when 
I say that it is a property in a lover to will a union 
with the beloved object, that I do not understand by 
will a consent or deliberation or a free decree of the 
mind (for that this is a fiction we have demonstrated 
above), nor even a desire of the lover to unite himself 
with the beloved object when it is absent, nor a desire 
to continue in its presence when it is present, for love 
can be conceived without either one or the other of 


ORIGIN AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS = 221 


these desires; but by will I understand the satisfac- 
tion that the beloved object produces in the lover by 
its presence, by virtue of which the joy of the lover is 
strengthened, or at any rate supported. 

VII. Hatred is sorrow with the accompanying idea 
of an external cause. 

Explanation —What is to be observed here will easily 
be seen from what has been said in the explanation of 
the preceding definition. 

VIII. Inclination (propensio) is a joy with the ac: 
companying idea of some object as being accidentally 
the cause of joy. 

IX. Aversion is sorrow with the accompanying idea 
of some object which is accidentally the cause of the 
sorrow. 

X. Devotion is love towards an object which aston- 
ishes us. 

Explanation.—Astonishment arises from the novelty 
of the object. If, therefore, it should happen that we 
often imagine the object at which we are astonished, 
we shall cease to be astonished at it, and hence we see 
that the emotion of devotion easily degenerates into 
simple love. 

XI. Derision is joy arising from the imagination that 
something we despise is present in an object we hate. 

Explanation.—In so far as we despise a thing we hate 
do we deny its existence, and so far do we rejoice. But 
inasmuch as we suppose that a man hates what he ridi- 
cules, it follows that this joy is not solid. 

XII. Hope is a joy not constant, arising from the 
idea of something future or past, about the issue of 
which we sometimes doubt. 


wae THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


XIII. Fear is a sorrow not constant, arising from the 
idea of something future or past, about the issue of 
which we sometimes doubt. 

Explanation.—From these definitions it follows that 
there is no hope without fear nor fear without hope, 
for the person who wavers in hope and doubts concern- 
ing the issue of anything is supposed to imagine some- 
thing which may exclude its existence, and so far, 
therefore, to be sad, and consequently while he wavers 
in hope, to fear lest his wishes should not be accom- 
plished. So also the person who fears, that is to say, 
who doubts whether what he hates will not come to 
pass, imagines something which excludes the existence 
of what he hates, and therefore is rejoiced, and con- 
sequently so far hopes that it will not happen. 

XIV. Confidence is joy arising from the idea of a 
past or future object from which cause for doubting is 
removed. 

XV. Despair is sorrow arising from the idea of a 
past or future object from which cause for doubting is 
removed. 

Explanation.—Confidence, therefore, springs trom 
hope and despair from fear, whenever the reason fur 
doubting the issue is taken away; a case which occurs 
either because we imagine a thing past or future to be 
present and contemplate it as present, or because we 
imagine other things which exclude the existence of 
those which made us to doubt. 

For although we can never be sure about the issue of 
individual objects, it may nevertheless happen that we 
do not doubt it. For elsewhere we have shown that it 
is one thing not to doubt and another to possess certi- 


ORIGIN AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS — 223 


tude, and so it may happen that from the image of an 
object either past or future we are affected with the 
same emotion of joy or sorrow as that by which we 
should be affected from the image of an object present. 

XVI. Gladness (gaudium) is a joy with the accom- 
panying idea of something past, which, unhoped for, 
has happened. 

XVII. Remorse is sorrow with the accompanying 
idea of something past, which, unhoped for, has hap- 
pened. 

XVIII. Commiseration is sorrow with the accom- 
panying idea of evil which has happened to some one 
whom we imagine like ourselves. 

Explanation Between commiseration and compas- 
sion there seems to be no difference, excepting perhaps 
that commiseration refers rather to an individual emo- 
tion and compassion to it as a habit. 

XIX. Favor is love towards those who have benefited 
others. 

XX. Indignation is hatred towards those who have 
injured others. 

Explanation—I am aware that these names in com- 
mon bear a different meaning. But my object is not 
to explain the meaning of words but the nature of 
things, and to indicate them by words whose customary 
meaning shall not be altogether opposed to the mean- 
ing which I desire to bestow upon them. I consider 
it sufficient to have said this once for all. 

XXI. Over-estimation consists in thinking too highly 
of another person in consequence of our love for him. 

XXII. Contempt consists in thinking too little of 
another person in consequence of our hatred for him. 


224 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


Explanation. —Over-estimation and contempt are 
therefore respectively effects or properties of love or 
hatred, and so over-estimation may be defined as love 
in so far as it affects a man so that he thinks too much 
of the beloved object; and, on the contrary, contempt 
may be defined as hatred in so far as it affects a man 
so that he thinks too little of the object he hates. 

XXIII. Envy is hatred in so far as it affects a man 
so that he is sad at the good fortune of another person 
and is glad when any evil happens to him. 

Explanation.—To envy is generally opposed com- 
passion (misericordia), which may therefore be defined 
as follows, notwithstanding the usual signification of the 
word :— 

XXIV. Compassion is love in so far as it affects a 
man so that he is glad at the prosperity of another per- 
son and is sad when any evil happens to him. 

I pass now to consider other emotions which are at- 
tended by the idea of something within us as the cause. 

XXV. Self-satisfaction is the joy which is produced 
by contemplating ourselves and our own power of 
action. 

XXVI. Humility is the sorrow which is produced by 
contemplating our impotence or helplessness. 

Self-satisfaction is opposed to humility in so far as 
we understand by the former the joy which arises from 
contemplating our power of action, but in so far as we 
understand by it joy attended with the idea of some- 
thing done, which we believe has been done by a free 
decree of our mind, it is opposed to repentance, which 
we may thus define: — 

XX VII. Repentance is sorrow accompanied with the 


ORIGIN AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS = 225 


idea of something done which we believe has been done 
by a free decree of our mind. 

It is not to be wondered at that sorrow should al- 
ways follow all those actions which are from custom 
called wicked, and that joy should follow those which 
are called good. But that this is chiefly the effect of 
education will be evident from what we have before 
said. Parents, by reprobating what are called bad 
actions, and frequently blaming their children whenever 
they commit them, while they persuade them to what 
are called good actions, and praise their children when 
they perform them, have caused the emotions of sor- 
row to connect themselves with the former, and those 
of joy with the latter. Experience proves this, for 
custom and religion are not the same everywhere; but, 
on the contrary, things which are sacred to some are 
profane to others, and what are honorable with some 
are disgraceful with others. Education alone, there- 
fore, will determine whether a man will repent of any 
deed or boast of it. 

XXVIII. Pride is thinking too much of ourselves, 
through self-love. 

Explanation.—Pride differs, therefore, from over- 
estimation, inasmuch as the latter is related to an ex- 
ternal object, but pride to the man himself who thinks 
of himself too highly. As over-estimation, therefore, 
is an effect or property of love, so pride is an effect or 
property of self-love, and it may therefore be defined as 
love of ourselves or self-satisfaction, in so far as it 
affects us so that we think too highly of ourselves. 

To this emotion a contrary does not exist, for no one, 
through hatred of himself, thinks too little of himself; 


226 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


indeed, we may say that no one thinks too little of him- 
self, in so far as he imagines himself unable to do this 
or that thing. For whatever he imagines that he cannot 
do, that thing he necessarily imagines, and by his im- 
agination is so disposed that he is actually incapable of 
doing what he imagines he cannot do. So long, there- 
fore, as he imagines himself unable to do this or that 
thing, so long is he not determined to do it, and con- 
sequently so long it is impossible for him to do it. If, 
however, we pay attention to what depends upon opin- 
ion alone, we shall be able to conceive it possible for 
a man to think too little of himself, for it may happen 
that while he sorrowfully contemplates his own weak- 
ness he will imagine himself despised by everybody, 
although nothing could be further from their thoughts 
than to despise him. A man may also think too little 
of himself if in the present he denies something of 
himself in relation to a future time of which he is not 
sure; for example, when he denies that he can conceive 
of nothing with certitude, and that he can desire and 
do nothing which is not wicked and base. We may 
also say that a man thinks too little of himself when 
we see that, from an excess of fear or shame, he does 
not dare to do what others who are his equals dare to 
do. This emotion, to which I will give the name of 
despondency, may therefore be opposed to pride; for 
as self-satisfaction springs from pride, so despondency 
springs from humility, and it may therefore be defined 
thus: 

XXIX. Despondency is thinking too little of our- 
selves through sorrow. 

Explanationm—We are, nevertheless, often in the 


ORIGIN AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS = 227 


habit of opposing humility to pride, but only when we 
attend to their effects rather than to their nature. For 
we are accustomed to call a man proud who boasts too 
much, who talks about nothing but his own virtues and 
other people’s vices, who wishes to be preferred te 
everybody else, and who marches along with that state- 
liness and pomp which belong to others whose position 
is far above his. On the other hand, we call a man 
humble who often blushes, who confesses his own 
faults and talks about the virtues of others, who yields 
to every one, who walks with bended head, and who 
neglects to adorn himself. These emotions, humility 
and despondency, are very rare, for human nature, con- 
sidered in itself, struggles against them as much as it 
can, and hence those who have the most credit for 
being abject and humble are generally the most ambi- 
tious and envious. 

XXX. Self-exaltation is joy with the eee ee 
idea of some action we have done, which we imagine 
people praise. 

XXXII. Skame is sorrow, with the accompanying 
idea of some action which we imagine people blame. 

Explanation.—A difference, however, is here to be 
observed between shame and modesty. Shame Is sor- 
row which follows a deed of which we are ashamed. 
Modesty is the dread or fear of shame, which keeps 
a man from committing any disgraceful act. To 
modesty is usually opposed impudence, which indeed 
is not an emotion, as I shall show in the proper place; 
but the names of emotions, as I have already said, are 
matters rather of custom than indications of the nature 
of the emotions. I have thus discharged the task 


228 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


which I set myself of explaining the emotions of joy 
and sorrow. I will advance now to those which I 
ascribe to desire. 

XXXII. Regret is the desire or longing to possess 
something, the emotion being strengthened by the mem- 
ory of the obiect itself, and at the same time being re- 
strained by the memory of other things which exclude 
the existence of the desired object. 

Explanation.—Whenever we recollect a thing, as we 
have often said, we are thereby necessarily disposed to 
contemplate it with the same emotion as if it were 
present before us. But this ‘disposition or effort, while 
we are awake, is generally restrained by the images of 
things which exclude the existence of the thing which 
we recollect. Whenever, therefore, we recollect a thing 
which affects us with any kind of joy, we thereby en- 
deavor to contemplate it with the same emotion of joy 
as if it were present,—an attempt which is, however, 
immediately restrained by the memory of that which 
excludes the existence of the thing. Regret, therefore, 
is really a sorrow which is opposed to the joy which 
arises from the absence of what we hate. But because 
the name regret seems to connect this emotion with 
desire, I therefore ascribe it to desire. 

XXXIII. Emulation is the desire which is begotten 
in us of a thing because we imagine that other persons 
have the same desire. 

Explanation——He who seeks flight because others 
seek it, he who fears because he sees others fear, or 
even he who withdraws his hand and moves his body 
as if his hand were burning because he sees that an- 
other person has burnt his hand, such as these, I say, 


ORIGIN AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS = 229 


although they may indeed imitate the emotion of an- 
other, are not said to emulate it; not because we have 
recognized one cause for emulation and another for 
imitation, but because it has been the custom to call 
that man only emulous who imitates what we think 
noble, useful, or pleasant. 

XXXIV. Thankfulness or gratitude is the desire or 
endeavor of love with which we strive to do good to 
others who, from a similar emotion of love, have done 
good to us. 

XXXV. Benevolence is the desire to do good to 
those whom we pity. 

XXXVI. Anger is the desire by which we are im- 
pelled, through hatred, to injure those whom we hate. 

XXXVII. Vengeance is the desire which, springing 
from mutual hatred, urges us to injure those who, from 
a similar emotion, have injured us. 

XXXVIII. Cruelty or ferocity is the desire by 
which a man is impelled to injure any one whom we 
love or pity. 

Explanation—To cruelty is opposed mercy, which is 
not a passion, but a power of the mind by which a man 
restrains anger and vengeance. 

XXXIX. Fear is the desire of avoiding the greater 
of two dreaded evils by the less. 

XL. Audacity is the desire by which we are impelled 
to do something which is accompanied with a danger 
which our equals fear to meet. 

XLI. A person is said to be pusillanimous whose 
desire is restrained by the fear of a danger which his 
equals dare to meet. 

Explanations —Pusillanimity, therefore, is nothing 


230 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


but the dread of some evil which most persons do not 
usually fear, and therefore I do not ascribe it to the 
emotions of desire. I wished, notwithstanding, to ex- 
plain it here, because in so far as we attend to desire, 
pusillanimity is the true opposite of the emotion of 
audacity. 

XLII. Consternation is affirmed of the man whose 
desire of avoiding evil is restrained by astonishment at 
the evil which he fears. 

Explanation —Consternation is therefore a kind of 
pusillanimity. But because consternation springs from 
a double fear, it may be more aptly defined as that 
dread which holds a man stupefied or vacillating, so 
that he cannot remove an evil. I say stupefied, in so 
far as we understand his desire of removing the evil to 
be restrained by his astonishment. I say also vacillat- 
ing, in so far as we conceive the same desire to be re- 
strained by the fear of another evil which equally tor- 
tures him, so that he does not know which of the two 
evils to avoid. 

XLII. Courtesy or moderation is the desire of 
doing those things which please men and omitting 
those which displease them. 

XLIV. Ambition is the immoderate desire of glory. 

Ex planation—Ambition is a desire which increases 
and strengthens all the emotions, and that is the reason 
why it can hardly be kept under control. For so long 
as a man is possessed by any desire, he is necessarily 
at the same time possessed by this. Every noble man, 
says Cicero, is led by glory, and even the philosophers 
who write books about despising glory place their 
lames on the title-page. 


ORIGIN AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS — 231 


XLV. Luxuriousness is the immoderate desire or 
love of good living. 

XLVI. Drunkenness is the immoderate desire and 
love of drinking. 

XLVII. Avarice is the immoderate desire and love 
of riches. 

XLVIII. Lust is the immoderate desire and love of 
sexual intercourse. 

Explanation——This desire of sexual intercourse is 
usually called lust, whether it be held within bounds or 
not. I may add that the five last-mentioned emotions 
have no contraries, for moderation is a kind of ambi- 
tion, and I have already observed that temperance, 
sobriety, and chastity show a power and not a passion 
of the mind. Even supposing that an avaricious, am- 
bitious, or timid man refrains from an excess of eat- 
ing, drinking, or sexual intercourse, avarice, ambition, 
and fear are not therefore the opposites of voluptuous- 
ness, drunkenness, or lust. For the avaricious man 
generally desires to swallow as much meat and drink as 
he can, provided only it belong to another person. 
The ambitious man, too, if he hopes he can keep it a 
secret, will restrain himself in nothing, and if he lives 
amongst drunkards and libertines, will be more in- 
clined to their vices just because he is ambitious. The 
timid man, too, does what he does not will; and al- 
though, in order to avoid death, he may throw his 
riches into the sea, he remains avaricious; nor does 
the lascivious man cease to be lascivious because he is 
sorry that he cannot gratify his desire. Absolutely, 
therefore, these emotions have reference not so much 
to the acts themselves of eating and drinking as to the 


232 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


appetite and love itself. Consequently nothing can be 
opposed to these emotions but nobility of soul and 
strength of mind, as we shall see afterwards. 

The definitions of jealousy and the other vacillations 
of the mind I pass over in silence, both because they 
are compounded of the emotions which we have already 
defined, and also because many of them have no names, 
—a fact which shows that, for the purposes of life, it 
is sufficient to know these combinations generally. 
Moreover, it follows from the definitions of the emo- 
tions which we have explained that they all arise from 
desire, joy, or sorrow, or rather that there are none but 
these three, which pass under names varying as their 
relations and external signs vary. If, therefore, we 
attend to these primitive emotions and to what has 
been said above about the nature of the mind, we shall 
be able here to define the emotions in so far as they 
are related to the mind alone. 

General definition of the emotions —Emotion, which 
is called animi pathema, is a confused idea by which the 
mind affirms of its body, or any part of it, a greater 
or less power of existence than before; and this in- 
crease of power being given, the mind itself is de- 
termined to one particular thought rather than to an- 
pther. 

Explanation.—I say, in the first place, that an emo- 
tion or passion of the mind zs a confused idea. For we 
have shown that the mind suffers only in so far as it has 
inadequate or confused ideas. I say again, by which 
the mind affirms of its body, or any part of it, a greater 
or less power of existence than before. For all ideas 
which we possess of bodies indicate the actual consti- 


ORIGIN AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS — 233 


tution of our body rather than the nature of the ex- 
ternal body; but this idea, which constitutes the form 
of an emotion, must indicate or express the constitution 
of the body, or of some part of it; which constitution 
the body or any part of it possesses from the fact that 
its power of action or force of existence is increased 
or diminished, helped or limited. But it is to be ob- 
served, that when I say a greater or less power of exist- 
ence than before, I do not mean that the mind com- 
pares the present with the past constitution of the body, 
but that the idea which constitutes the form of emo- 
tion affirms something of the body which actually in- 
volves more or Jess reality than before. Moreover, 
since the essence of the mind consists in its affirmation 
of the actual existence of its body, and since we under- 
stand by perfection the essence itself of the thing, it 
follows that the mind passes to a greater or less perfec- 
tion when it is able to affirm of its body, or some part of 
it, something which involves a greater or less reality 
than before. When, therefore, I have said that the 
mind’s power of thought is increased or diminished, I 
have wished to be understood as meaning nothing else 
than that the mind has formed an idea of its body, or 
some part of its body, which expresses more or less 
reality than it had hitherto affirmed of the body. For 
the value of ideas and the actual power of thought are 
measured by the value of the object. Finally, I added, 
which being given, the mind itself is determined to one 
particular thought rather than to another, that I might 
also express the nature of desire in addition to that of 
joy and sorrow, which is explained by the first part of 
the definition. 


34 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


I have now, I think, explained the principal emotions 
and vacillations of the mind which are compounded of 
the three primary emotions, desire, joy, and sorrow, 
and have set them forth through their first causes. 
From what has been said it is plain that we are dis- 
turbed by external causes in a number of ways, and 
that, like the waves of the sea agitated by contrary 
winds, we fluctuate in our ignorance of our future and 
destiny. I have said, however, that I have only ex- 
plained the principal mental complications, and not all 
which may exist. For by the same method which we 
have pursued above it would be easy to show that love 
unites itself to repentance, scorn, shame, etc.; but I 
think it has already been made clear to all that the 
emotions can be combined in so many ways, and that so 
many variations can arise, that no limits can be as- 
signed to their number. It is sufficient for my purpose 
to have enumerated only those which are of conse- 
quence; the rest, of which I have taken no notice, 
being more curious than important. 

There is one constantly recurring characteristic of 
love which I have yet to notice, and that is, that while 
we are enjoying the thing which we desired, the body 
acquires from that fruition a new disposition by which 
it is otherwise determined, and the images of other 
things are excited in it, and the mind begins to imagine 
and to desire other things. For example, when we 
imagine anything which usually delights our taste, we 
desire to enjoy it by eating it. But whilst we enjoy it 
the stomach becomes full, and the constitution of the 
body becomes altered. If, therefore, the body being 
now otherwise disposed, the image of the food, in con- 


ORIGIN AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS = 235 


sequence of its being present, and therefore also the 
effort or desire to eat it, become more intense, then this 
new disposition of the body will oppose this effort or 
desire, and consequently the presence of the food which 
we desired will become hateful to us, and this hateful- 
ness is what we call loathing or disgust. 

As for the external modifications of the body which 
are observed in the emotions, such as_ trembling, 
paleness, sobbing, laughter, and the like, I have neg- 
lected to notice them, because they belong to the body 
alone without any relationship to the mind. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EMOTIONS 


The Association of the Emotions 


Ir the human body has at any time been simul- 
taneously affected by two bodies, whenever the mind 
afterwards imagines one of them, it will immediately 
remember the other. But the imaginations of the 
mind indicate rather the modifications of our body than 
the nature of external bodies, and therefore if the body, 
and consequently the mind, has been at any time, 
simultaneously affected by two emotions, whenever it 
is afterwards affected by one of them, it will also be 
affected by the other. 

Let the mind be supposed to be affected at the same 
time by two emotions, its power of action not being in- 
creased or diminished by one, while it is increased or 
diminished by the other. From the preceding propo- 
sition it is plain that when the mind is afterwards af- 
fected by the first emotion through its true cause, which 
(by hypothesis) of itself neither increases nor dimin- 
ishes the mind’s power of thinking, it will at the same 
time be affected by the other emotion, which does in- 
crease or diminish that power, that is to say, it will be 
affected with joy or sorrow; and thus the thing itself 
will be the cause of joy or of sorrow, not of itself, but 


accidentally. In the same way it can easily be shown 
236 


ee 


THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EMOTIONS 23? 


that the same thing may accidentally be the cause of 
desire. 

The fact that we have contemplated a thing with an 
emotion of joy or sorrow, of which it is not the efficient 
cause, is a sufficient reason for being able to love or 
hate it. 

We now understand why we love or hate certain 
things from no cause which is known to us, but merely 
from sympathy or antipathy, as they say. To this 
class, too, are to be referred those objects which affect 
us with joy or sorrow solely because they are some- 
what like objects which usually affect us with those 
emotions. I know indeed that the writers who first 
introduced the words “Sympathy” and “Antipathy” 
desired thereby to signify certain hidden qualities of 
things, but nevertheless I believe that we shall be per- 
mitted to understand by those names qualities which 
are plain and well known. 

Anything may be accidentally the cause either of 
hope or fear. Things which are accidentally the 
causes either of hope or fear are called good or evil 
omens. In so far as the omens are the cause of hope 
and fear are they the cause of joy or of sorrow, and 
consequently so far do we love them or hate them, and 
endeavor to use them as means to obtain those things 
for which we hope, or to remove them as obstacles or 
causes of fear. Our natural constitution, too, is such 
that we easily believe the things we hope for, and be- 
lieve with difficulty those we fear, and we think too 
much of the former and too little of the latter. Thus 
have superstitions arisen, by which men are every- 
where disquieted. I do not consider it worth while to 


238 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


go any further, and to explain here all those vacilla- 
tions of mind which arise from hope and fear, since it 
follows from the definition alone of these emotions that 
hope cannot exist without fear, nor fear without hope. 

If we imagine a certain thing to possess something 
which resembles an object which usually affects the 
mind with joy or sorrow, although the quality in which 
the thing resembles the object is not the efficient cause 
of these emotions, we shall nevertheless, by virtue of 
the resemblance alone, love or hate the thing. 

If we have been affected with joy or sorrow by any 
one who belongs to a class or nation different from our 
own, and if our joy or sorrow is accompanied with the 
idea of this person as its cause, under the common name 
of his class or nation, we shall not love or hate him 
merely, but the whole of the class or nation to which he 
belongs. 


The Imitation and Reciprocation of the Emotions 
I 


The images of things are modifications of the human 
body, and the ideas of these modifications represent to 
us external bodies as if they were present, that is to 
say, these ideas involve both the nature of our own 
body and at the same time the present nature of the ex- 
ternal body. If, therefore, the nature of the external 
body be like that of our body, then the idea of the 
external body which we imagine will involve a modi- 
fication of our body like that of the external body. 
Therefore, if we imagine any one who is like ourselves 
to be affected by a modification, this imagination will 
express a modification of our body like that modifica- 


THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EMOTIONS 239 


tion, and therefore we shall be modified with a similar 
modification ourselves, because we imagine something 
like us to be modified with the same. If, on the other 
hand, we hate a thing which is like ourselves, we shall 
so far be modified by a modification contrary and not 
similar to that with which it is modified. 

If we imagine that a person enjoys a thing, that 
will be a sufficient reason for making us love the thing 
and desiring to enjoy it. If we imagine that a person 
enjoys a thing which only one can possess, we do all 
we can to prevent his possessing it. His enjoyment 
of the thing is an obstacle to our joy, and we endeavor 
to bring into existence everything which we imagine 
conduces to joy, and to remove or destroy everything 
_ opposed to it, or which we imagine conduces to sorrow. 

We see, therefore, that the nature of man is gener- 
ally constituted so as to pity those who are in adversity 
and envy those who are in prosperity, and he envies 
with a hatred which is the greater in proportion as he 
loves what he imagines another possesses. We see also 
that from the same property of human nature from 
which it follows that men pity one another it also fol- 
lows that they are envious and ambitious. If we will 
consult experience, we shall find that she teaches the 
same doctrine, especially if we consider the first years 
of our life. For we find that children, because their 
body is, as it were, continually in equilibrium, laugh 
and cry merely because they see others do the same; 
whatever else they see others do they immediately wish 
to imitate; everything which they think is pleasing to 
other people they want. And the reason is, as we have 
said, that the images of things are the modifications 


240 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


themselves of the human body, or the ways in which it 
is modified by external causes and disposed to this or 
that action. 


II 


If we imagine that we are hated by another without 
having given him any cause for it, we shall hate him in 
return. If we imagine that we have given just cause 
for the hatred, we shall then be affected with shame. 
This, however, rarely happens; we endeavor to affirm 
everything, both concerning ourselves and concerning 
the beloved object which we imagine will affect us or 
the object with joy, and, on the contrary, we endeavor 
to deny everything that will affect either it or ourselves 
with sorrow. 

This reciprocity of hatred may also arise from the 
fact that hatred is followed by an attempt to bring 
evil upon him who is hated. If, therefore, we imagine 
that we are hated by any one else, we shall imagine 
him as the cause of some evil or sorrow, and thus we 
shall be affected with sorrow or apprehension ac- 
companied with the idea of the person who hates us 
as a cause; that is to say, we shall hate him in return, 
as we have said above. 

If we imagine that the person we love is affected 
with hatred towards us, we shall be agitated at the same 
time both with love and hatred. For in so far as we 
imagine that we are hated are we determined to hate 
him in return. But (by hypothesis) we love him not- 
withstanding, and therefore we shall be agitated both 
by love and hatred. 

If we imagine that an evil has been brought upon 


THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EMOTIONS 241 


us through the hatred of some person towards whom we 
have hitherto been moved by no emotion, we shall im- 
mediately endeavor to return that evil upon him. 

If we imagine that any one like ourselves is affected 
with hatred towards an object like ourselves which we 
love, we shall hate him. If we imagine that we are 
beloved by a person without having given any cause 
for the love we shall love him in return. 

If we imagine that we have given just cause for love, 
we shall pride ourselves upon it. This frequently oc- 
curs, and we have said that the contrary takes place 
when we believe that we are hated by another person. 
This reciprocal love, and consequently this attempt to 
do good to the person who loves us, and who endeavors 
to do good to us, is called thankfulness or gratitude, 
and from this we can see how much readier men are to 
revenge themselves than to return a benefit. 

If we imagine that we are loved by a person we 
hate, we shall at the same time be agitated both by 
love and hatred. If the hatred prevail, we shall en- 
deavor to bring evil upon the person by whom we are 
loved. This emotion is called Cruelty, especially if it 
is believed that the person who loves has not given 
any ordinary reason for hatred. 


The “Herd Instinct’’ 


If we imagine men to love or hate a thing, we shall 
therefore love or hate it; that is to say, we shall there- 
fore rejoice or be sad at the presence of the thing, and 
therefore we shall endeavor to do everything which 
we imagine men? will look upon with joy, and, on the 


1 Both here and in what follows to whom we are moved by no 
emotion I understand by the word men, men (Sp.). 


242 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


contrary, we shall be averse to doing anything to which 
we imagine men are averse. 

He who imagines that he affects others with joy or 
sorrow will necessarily be affected with joy or sorrow. 
But since man is conscious of himself by means of the 
emotions by which he is determined to act; therefore 
if a person has done anything which he imagines will 
affect others with joy, he also will be affected with joy, 
accompanied with an idea of himself as its cause; that 
is to say, he will look upon himself with joy. If, on 
the other hand, he has done anything which he imagines 
will affect others with sorrow, he will look upon him- 
self with sorrow. 

If we imagine that a person loves, desires, or hates 
a thing which we ourselves love, desire, or hate, we 
shall on that account love, desire, or hate the thing 
more steadily. If, on the other hand, we imagine that 
he is averse to the thing we love or loves the thing to 
which we are averse, we shall then suffer vacillation 
of mind. 

It follows from this proposition that every one en- 
deavors as much as possible to make others love what 
he loves, and to hate what he hates. Hence the poet 
says: 


Speremus pariter, pariter metuamus amantes; 
Ferreus est, si quis, quod sinit alter, amat. 


This effort to make every one approve what we love 
wr hate is in truth ambition, and so we see that each 
person by nature desires that other persons should live 
according to his way of thinking; but if every one does 
this, then all are a hindrance to one another, and if 





THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EMOTIONS 243 


every one wishes to be praised or beloved by the rest, 
then they all hate one another. 


The Varieties of Emotion 


Joy and sorrow, and consequently the emotions which 
are compounded of these or derived from them, are 
passions. But we necessarily suffer in so far as we have 
inadequate ideas, and only in so far as we have them; 
that is to say, we necessarily suffer only in so far as 
we imagine, or in so far as we are affected by a 
modification which involves the nature of our body and 
that of an external body. The nature, therefore, of 
each passion must necessarily be explained in such a 
manner, that the nature of the object by which we are 
affected is expressed. The joy, for example, which 
springs from an object A involves the nature of that 
object A, and the joy which springs from B involves 
the nature of that object B, and therefore these two 
emotions of joy are of a different nature, because they 
arise from causes of a different nature. In like man- 
ner the emotion of sorrow which arises from one object 
is of a different kind from that which arises from an- 
other cause, and the same thing is to be understood of 
love, hatred, hope, fear, vacillation of mind, etc.; so 
that there are necessarily just as many kinds of Joy, 
sorrow, love, hatred, etc., as there are kinds of objects 
by which we are affected. But desire is the essence 
itself or nature of a person in so far as this nature is 
conceived from its given constitution as determined 
towards any action, and therefore as a person is af- 
fected by external causes with this or that kind of joy, 
sorrow, love, hatred, etc., that is to say, as his nature 


244 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


is constituted in this or that way, so must his desire 
vary and the nature of one desire differ from that of 
another, just as the emotions from which each desire 
arises differ. There are as many kinds of desires, 
therefore, as there are kinds of joy, sorrow, love, etc., 
and, consequently (as we have just shown), as there 
are kinds of objects by which we are affected. 

All emotions are related to desire, joy, or sorrow, as 
the definitions show which we have given of those 
emotions. But desire is the very nature or essence of a 
person and therefore the desire of one person differs 
from the desire of another as much as the nature or 
essence of the one differs from that of the other. 
Again, joy and sorrow are passions by which the power 
of a person or his effort to persevere in his own being 
is increased or diminished, helped, or limited. But by 
the effort to persevere in his own being, in so far as it 
is related at the same time to the mind and the body, 
we understand appetite and desire, and therefore joy 
and sorrow are desire or appetite in so far as the latter 
is increased, diminished, helped, or limited by external 
causes; that is to say they are the nature itself of each 
person. 

The joy or sorrow of one person therefore differs 
from the joy or sorrow of another as much as the na- 
ture or essence of one person differs from that of the 
other, and consequently the emotion of one person dif- 
fers from the corresponding emotion of another. 

Hence it follows that the emotions of animals which 
are called irrational (for after we have learned the 
origin of the mind we can in no way doubt that brutes 
feel) differ from human emotions as much as the 


THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EMOTIONS 245 


nature of a brute differs from that of a man. Both 
the man and the horse, for example, are swayed by 
the lust to propagate, but the horse is swayed by equine 
lust and the man by that which is human. The lusts 
and appetites of insects, fishes, and birds must vary in 
the same way; and so, although each individual lives 
contented with its own nature and delights in it, never- 
theless the life with which it is contented and its joy 
are nothing but the idea or soul of that individual, and 
so the joy of one differs in character from the joy of 
the other as much as the essence of the one differs 
from the essence of the other. Finally, it follows from 
the preceding proposition that the joy by which the 
drunkard is enslaved is altogether different from the joy 
which is the portion of the philosopher,—a thing I 
wished just to hint in passing. 


The Inconstancy of the Emotions 


The human body is affected by external bodies in a 
number of ways. Two men, therefore, may be affected 
in different ways at the same time, and therefore they 
can be affected by one and the same object in different 
ways. Again the human body may be affected now in 
this and now in that way, and consequently it may be 
affected by one and the same object in different ways at 
different times. 

We thus see that it is possible for one man to love a 
thing and for another man to hate it; for this man to 
fear what this man does not fear, and for the same man 
to love what before he hated, and to dare to do what 
before he feared. Again, since each judges according 
to his own emotion what is good and what is evil, what 


246 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


is better and what is worse, it follows that men may 
change in their judgment as they do in their emotions, 
and hence it comes to pass that when we compare men, 
we distinguish them solely by the difference in their 
emotions, calling some brave, others timid, and others 
by other names. 

For example, I shall call a man brave who despises 
an evil which I usually fear, and if, besides this, I con- 
sider the fact that his desire of doing evil to a person 
whom he hates or doing good to one whom he loves is 
not restrained by that fear of evil by which I am 
usually restrained, I call him audacious. On the other 
hand, the man who fears an evil which I usually despise 
will appear timid, and if, besides this, I consider that 
his desire is restrained by the fear of an evil which 
has no power to restrain me, I call him pusillanimous ; 
and in this way everybody will pass judgment. 

Finally, from this nature of man and the inconstancy 
of his judgment, in consequence of which he often 
judges things from mere emotion, and the things which 
he believes contribute to his joy or his sorrow, and 
which, therefore, he endeavors to bring to pass or 
remove, are often only imaginary—to say nothing 
about the uncertainty of things—it is easy to see that a 
man may often be himself the cause of his sorrow or 
his joy, or of being affected with sorrow or joy accom- 
panied with the idea of himself as its cause, so that 
we can easily understand what repentance and what 
self-approval are. 

Love and hatred towards any object, for example, 
towards Peter, are destroyed if the joy and the sorrow 
which they respectively involve be joined to the idea 


THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EMOTIONS 247 


of another cause; and they are respectively diminished 
in proportion as we imagine that Peter has not been 
their sole cause. 

For the same reason, love or hatred towards an ob- 
ject we imagine to be free must be greater than towards 
an object which is under necessity. 

An object which we imagine to be free must be per- 
ceived through itself and without others. If, there- 
fore, we imagine it to be the cause of joy or sorrow, 
we shall for that reason alone love or hate it, and that 
too with the greatest love or the greatest hatred which 
can spring from the given emotion. But if we imagine 
that the object which is the cause of that emotion is 
necessary, then we shall imagine it as the cause of that 
emotion, not alone, but together with other causes, and 
so our love or hatred towards it will be less. 

Hence it follows that our hatred or love towards 
one another is greater than towards other things, be- 
cause we think we are free. 


The Power of Love Over Hate 


If we imagine that the person we hate is affected with 
hatred towards us, a new hatred is thereby produced, 
the old hatred still remaining (by hypothesis). If, on 
the other hand, we imagine him to be affected with love 
towards us, in so far as we imagine it shall we look upon 
ourselves with joy, and endeavor to please him; that 
is to say, in so far shall we endeavor not to hate him 
nor to affect him with sorrow. This effort will be 
greater or less as the emotion from which it arises is 
greater or less, and, therefore, should it be greater 
than that which springs from hatred, and by which 


248 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


we endeavor to affect with sorrow the object we hate, 
then it will prevail and banish hatred from the mind. 
Hatred is increased through return of hatred, but may 
be destroyed by love. 

Hatred which is altogether overcome by love passes 
into love, and the love is therefore greater than if ha- 
tred had not preceded it. For if we begin to love a thing 
which we hated, or upon which we were in the habit of 
looking with sorrow, we shall rejoice for the very rea- 
son that we love, and to this joy which love involves a 
new joy is added, which springs from the fact that the 
effort to remove the sorrow which hatred involves, is so 
much assisted, there being also present before us as the 
cause of our joy the idea of the person whom we hated. 

Notwithstanding the truth of this proposition, no one 
will try to hate a thing or will wish to be affected with 
sorrow in order that he may rejoice the more; that is 
to say, no one will desire to inflict loss on himself in 
the hope of recovering the loss, or to become ill in the 
hope of getting well, inasmuch as every one will always 
try to preserve his being and to remove sorrow from 
himself as much as possible. Moreover, if it can be 
imagined that it is possible for us to desire to hate a 
person in order that we may love him afterwards the 
more, we must always desire to continue the hatred. 
For the love will be the greater as the hatred has been 
greater, and therefore we shall always desire the hatred 
to be more and more increased. Upon the same prin- 
ciple we shall desire that our sickness may continue and 
increase in order that we may afterwards enjoy the 
greater pleasure when we get well, and therefore we 
shall always desire sickness, which is absurd. 


THIRD PART 


ON MAN’S WELL-BEING 


All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the 
quality of the object to which we are attached by love. 
Love for an object eternal and infinite feeds the mind 
with joy alone, a joy that is free from all sorrow. 

SPINOZA. 


AP 





Tai | if te M Lu 
Yam x ACME Lop THA 7. oul A, "3 oh 
Te GLE ARR ar Lm we Pe nam tha 


CHAPTER XIV 
OF HUMAN BONDAGE 


Introductory 


THE impotence of man to govern or restrain the 
emotions I call bondage, for a man who is under their 
control is not his own master, but is mastered by for- 
tune, in whose power he is, so that he is often forced to 
follow the worse, although he sees the better before 
him. I propose in this part to demonstrate why this 
Is, and also to show what of good and evil the emotions 
possess. 

But before I begin I should like to say a few words 
about perfection and imperfection, and about good and 
evil. If a man has proposed to do a thing and has 
accomplished it, he calls it perfect, and not only he, but 
every one else who has really known or has believed 
that he has known the mind and intention of the author 
of that work will call it perfect too. For example, 
having seen some work (which I suppose to be as yet 
not finished), if we know that the intention of the 
author of that work is to build a house, we shall call 
the house imperfect; while, on the other hand, we 
shall call it perfect as soon as we see the work has been 
brought to the end which the author had determined for 
it. But if we see any work such as we have never 
seen before, and if we do not know the mind of the 
workman, we shall then not be able to say whether the 


work is perfect or imperfect. 
251 


Rov THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


This seems to have been the first signification of 
these words; but afterwards men began to form univer- 
sal ideas, to think out for themselves types of houses, 
buildings, castles, and to prefer some types of things to 
others; and so it happened that each person called a 
thing perfect which seemed to agree with the universal 
idea which he had formed of that thing, and, on the 
other hand, he called a thing imperfect which seemed 
to agree less with his typal conception, although, ac- 
cording to the intention of the workman, it had been 
entirely completed. This appears to be the only reason 
why the words perfect and imperfect are commonly 
applied to natural objects which are not made with 
human hands; for men are in the habit of forming, 
both of natural as well as of artificial objects, uni- 
versal ideas which they regard as types of things, 
and which they think Nature has in view, setting 
them before herself as types too; it being the common 
opinion that she does nothing except for the sake of 
some end. When, therefore, men see something done 
by Nature which does not altogether answer to that 
typal conception which they have of the thing, 
they think that Nature herself has failed or com- 
mitted an error, and that she has left the thing 
imperfect. 

Thus we see that the custom of applying the words 
perfect and imperfect to natural objects has arisen 
rather from prejudice than from true knowledge of 
them. For we have shown that Nature does nothing 
for the sake of an end, for that eternal and infinite 
Being whom we call God or Nature acts by the same 
necessity by which He exists; for we have shown that 


OF HUMAN BONDAGE 253 


He acts by the same necessity of nature as that by 
which He exists. The reason or cause, therefore, why 
God or Nature acts and the reason why He exists are 
one and the same. Since, therefore, He exists for no 
end, He acts for no end; and since He has no prin- 
ciple or end of existence, He has no principle or end 
of action. A final cause, as it is called, is nothing, 
therefore, but human desire, in so far as this is con- 
sidered as the principle or primary cause of anything. 
For example, when we say that the having a house to 
live in was the final cause of this or that house, we 
merely mean that a man, because he imagined the ad- 
vantages of a domestic life, desired to build a house. 
Therefore, having a house to live in, in so far as it is 
considered as a final cause, is merely this particular 
desire, which is really an efficient cause, and is con- 
sidered as primary, because men are usually ignorant of 
the causes of their desires; for, as I have often said, 
we are conscious of our actions and desires, but igno- 
rant of the causes by which we are determined to desire 
anything. As for the vulgar opinion that Nature some- 
times fails or commits an error, or produces imperfect 
things, I class it amongst those fictions mentioned. 
above.* 

Perfection, therefore, and imperfection are really 
only modes of thought; that is to say, notions which 
we are in the habit of forming from the comparison 
with one another of individuals of the same species or 
genus, and this is the reason why I have said that by 
reality and perfection I understand the same thing; 
for we are in the habit of referring all individuals in 


1 Chapter Eight ad fin. 


254 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


Nature to one genus, which is called the most general; 
that is to say, to the notion of being, which embraces 
absolutely all the individual objects in Nature. In so 
far, therefore, as we refer the individual objects in 
Nature to this genus, and compare them one with an- 
other, and discover that some possess more being or 
reality than others, in so far do we call some more per- 
fect than others; and in so far as we assign to the 
latter anything which, like limitation, termination, im- 
potence, etc., involves negation, shall we call them im- 
perfect, because they do not affect our minds so 
strongly as those we call perfect, but not because any- 
thing which really belongs to them is wanting, or be- 
cause Nature has committed an error. For nothing be- 
longs to the nature of anything excepting that which 
follows from the necessity of the nature of the efficient 
cause, and whatever follows from the necessity of the 
nature of the efficient cause necessarily happens. 

With regard to good and evil, these terms indicate 
nothing positive in things considered in themselves, nor 
are they anything else than modes of thought, or no- 
tions which we form from the comparison of one thing 
with another. For one and the same thing may at the 
same time be both good and evil or indifferent. Music, 
for example, is good to a melancholy person, bad to one 
mourning, while to a deaf man it is neither good nor 
bad. But although things are so, we must retain these 
words. For since we desire to form for ourselves an 
idea of man upon which we may look as a model of 
human nature, it will be of service to us to retain these 
expressions in the sense I have mentioned. 

By good, therefore, I understand in the following 


OF HUMAN BONDAGE 25* 


pages everything which we are certain is a means by 
which we may approach nearer and nearer to the model 
of human nature we set before us. By evil, on the 
contrary, [I understand everything which we are certain 
hinders us from reaching that model. Again, I shall 
call men more or less perfect or imperfect in so far as 
they approach more or less nearly to this same model. 
For it is to be carefully observed, that when I say that 
an individual passes from a less to a greater perfection 
and vice versd, I do not understand that from one 
essence or form he is changed into another (for a horse, 
for instance, would be as much destroyed if it were 
changed into a man as if it were changed into an in- 
sect), but rather we conceive that his power of action, 
in so far as it is understood by his own nature, is in- 
creased or diminished. Finally, by perfection gener- 
ally, I understand, as I have said, reality; that is to 
say, the essence of any object in so far as it exists 
and acts in a certain manner, no regard being paid to 
its duration. For no individual thing can be said to 
be more perfect because for a longer time it has per- 
severed in existence; inasmuch as the duration of 
things cannot be determined by their essence, the es- 
sence of things involving no fixed or determined period 
of existence; any object, whether it be more or less 
perfect, always being able to persevere in existence 
with the same force as that with which it commenced 
existence. All things, therefore, are equal in this 
respect. 
Definitions. 


I—By good, I understand that which we certainly 
know is useful to us. 


256 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


II. By evil, on the contrary, I understand that which 
we certainly know hinders us from possessing anything 
that is good. 

With regard to these two definitions, see the close of 
the preceding. 

III. I call individual things contingent in so far as 
we discover nothing, whilst we attend to their essence 
alone, which necessarily posits their existence or which 
necessarily excludes it. 

IV. I call these individual things possible, in so far 
as we are ignorant, whilst we attend to the cause from 
which they must be produced, whether these causes are 
determined to the production of these things. 

V. By contrary emotions, I understand in the follow- 
ing pages those which, although they may be of the 
same kind, draw a man in different directions; such as 
voluptuousness and avarice, which are both a species 
of love, and are not contrary to one another by nature, 
but only by accident. 

VI. I here call a thing past or future in so far as we 
have been or shall be affected by it; for example, in 
so far as we have seen a thing or are about to see it, in 
so far as it has strengthened us or will strengthen us, 
has injured or will injure us. For in so far as we thus 
imagine it do we affirm its existence; that is to say, 
the body is affected by no mode which excludes the 
existence of the thing, and therefore the body is af- 
fected by the image of the thing in the same way as if 
th> thing itself were present. But because it generally 
happens that those who possess much experience hesi- 
tate when they think of a thing as past or future, and 
doubt greatly concerning its issue, therefore the emo- 


OF HUMAN BONDAGE 257 


tions which spring from such images of things are not 
so constant, but are generally disturbed by the images 
of other things, until men become more sure of the 
issue. 

However, it is to be observed that it is the same 
with time as it is with place; for as beyond a certain 
limit we can form no distinct imagination of distance— 
that is to say, as we usually imagine all objects to be 
equally distant from us, and as if they were on the same 
plane, if their distance from us exceeds 200 feet, or 
if their distance from the position we occupy is greater 
than we can distinctly imagine—so we imagine all ob- 
jects to be equally distant from the present time, and 
refer them as if to one moment, if the period to which 
their existence belongs is separated from the present 
by a longer interval than we can usually imagine dis- 
tinctly. 

VII. By end for the sake of which we do anything, 
I understand appetite. 

VIII. By virtue and power, I understand the same 
thing; that is to say, virtue, in so far as it is related 
to man, is the essence itself or nature of the man in sa 
far as it has the power of effecting certain things which 
can be understood through the laws of its nature 
alone. 


Axiom 
There is no individual thing in Nature which is not 
surpassed in strength and power by some other thing; 
but any individual thing being given, another and a 
stronger is also given, by which the former can be 
destroyed. 


258 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


Man’s Place in Nature 


The power by which individual things and, conse-: 


quently, man preserve their being is the actual power of 
God or Nature, not in so far as it is infinite, but in so 
far as it can be manifested by the actual essence of 
man. The power therefore of man, in so far as it is 
manifested by his actual essence is part of the infinite 
power of God or Nature, that is to say, part of His 
essence. Again, if it were possible that man could 
suffer no changes but those which can be understood 
through his nature alone, it would follow that he could 
not perish, but that he would exist forever necessarily; 
and this necessary existence must result from a cause 
whose power is either finite or infinite, that is to say, 
either from the power of man alone, which would be 
able to place at a distance from himself all other changes 
which could take their origin from external causes, or 
it must result from the infinite power of Nature by 
which all individual things would be so directed that 
man could suffer no changes but those tending to his 
preservation. 

But the first case is absurd. The force by which man 
perseveres in existence is limited, and infinitely sur- 
passed by the power of external causes. This is evi- 
dent from the Axiom. Therefore if it were possible 
for a man to suffer no changes but those which could 
be understood through his own nature alone, and con- 
sequently (as we have shown) that he should always 
necessarily exist, this must follow from the infinite 
power of God; and therefore from the necessity of the 
divine nature, in so far as it is considered as affected 


OF HUMAN BONDAGE 259 


by the idea of any one man, the whole order of Nature, 
in so far as it is conceived under the attributes of 
thought and extension, would have to be deduced. 
From this it would follow that man would be infinite, 
which (by the first part of this demonstration) is an 
absurdity. It is impossible, therefore, that a man can 
suffer no changes but those of which he is the adequate 
cause. 

Hence it follows that a man is necessarily always 
subject to passions, and that he follows and obeys the 
common order of Nature, accommodating himself to it 
as far as the nature of things requires. The force and 
increase of any passion and its perseverance in exist- 
ence are not limited by the power by which we en- 
deavor to persevere In existence, but by the power of 
an external cause compared with our own power. 


The Nature of Good and Evil 


We call a thing good which contributes to the preser- 
vation of our being, and we call a thing evil if it is an 
obstacle to the preservation of our being; that is to 
say, a thing is called by us good or evil as it increases 
or diminishes, helps or restrains, our power of action. 
In so far, therefore, as we perceive that any object 
affects us with joy or sorrow do we call it good or evil, 
and therefore the knowledge of good or evil is nothing 
but an idea of joy or sorrow which necessarily follows 
from the emotion itself of joy or sorrow. But this idea 
is united to the emotion in the same way as the mind is 
united to the body, or, in other words, this idea is not 
actually distinguished from the emotion itself; that is to 
say, it is not actually distinguished from the idea of 


260 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


the modification of the body, unless in conception alone. 
This knowledge, therefore, of good and evil is nothing 
but the emotion itself of joy and sorrow in so far as we 
are conscious of it. 


The Control of the Emotions 


An emotion, in so far as it is related to the mind, is 
an idea by which the mind affirms a greater or less 
power of existence for its body than the body pos- 
sessed before. Whenever, therefore, the mind is 
agitated by any emotion, the body is at the same time 
affected with a modification by which its power of 
action is increased or diminished. Again, this modifica- 
tion of the body receives from its own cause a power 
to persevere in its own being, a power, therefore, which 
cannot be restrained nor removed unless by a bodily 
cause affecting the body with a modification contrary 
to the first, and stronger than it. Thus the mind is 
affected by the idea of a modification stronger than 
the former and contrary to it; that is to say, it will 


be affected with an emotion stronger than the former - 


and contrary to it, and this stronger emotion will ex- 
clude the existence of the other or remove it. Thus 
an emotion cannot be restrained nor removed unless 
by an opposed and stronger emotion. 

An emotion, in so far as it is related to the mind, can- 
not be restrained nor removed unless by the idea of a 
bodily modification opposed to that which we suffer and 
stronger than it. For the emotion which we suffer can- 
not be restrained nor removed unless by an opposed 
and stronger emotion; that is to say, it cannot be 
removed unless by the idea of a bodily modification 


OF HUMAN BONDAGE 261 


stronger than that which affects us, and opposed to it. 

The force and increase of any passion and its perse- 
verance in existence are limited by the power of an 
external cause compared with our own power and 
therefore the other actions or power of a man may be 
so far surpassed by force of some passion or emotion, 
that the emotion may obstinately cling to him. 

An emotion is an idea by which the mind affirms a 
greater or less power of existence for the body than it 
possessed before, and therefore this idea has nothing 
positive which can be removed by the presence of the 
truth, and consequently the true knowledge of good 
and evil, in so far as it is true, can restrain no emotion. 
But in so far as it is an emotion will it restrain any other 
emotion, provided that the latter be the weaker of the 
two. 

From the true knowledge of good and evil, in so far 
as this is an emotion, necessarily arises desire, which is 
greater in proportion as the emotion from which it 
springs is greater. But this desire (by hypothesis), 
because it springs from our understanding, something 
truly follows therefore in us in so far as we act, and 
therefore must be understood through our essence 
alone, and consequently its strength and increase must 
be limited by human power alone. But the desires 
which spring from the emotions by which we are 
agitated are greater as the emotions themselves are 
greater, and therefore their strength and increase must 
be limited by the power of external causes, a power 
which, if it be compared with our own, indefinitely sur- 
passes it. The desires, therefore, which take their 
origin from such emotions as these may be much 


262 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


stronger than that which takes its origin from a true 
knowledge of good and evil, and the former may be 
able to restrain and extinguish the latter. 


Desire is the very essence of man, that is to say, 


the effort by which a man strives to persevere in his 
being. The desire, therefore, which springs from joy, 
by that very emotion of joy is assisted or increased, 
while that which springs from sorrow, by that very 
emotion of sorrow is lessened or restrained, and so the 
force of the desire which springs from joy must be lim- 
ited by human power, together with the power of an 
external cause, while that which springs from sorrow 
must be limited by human power alone. The latter is, 
therefore, weaker than the former. 


How the Strength of the Emotions Varies 
I 


The imagination is an idea by which the mind con- 
templates an object as present, an idea which never- 
theless indicates the constitution of the human body 
rather than the nature of the external object. Imagina- 
tion, therefore, is an emotion in so far as it indicates the 
constitution of the body. But the imagination in- 
creases in intensity in proportion as we imagine noth- 
ing which excludes the present existence of the external 
object. If, therefore, we imagine the cause of an emo- 
tion to be actually present with us, that emotion will be 
intenser or stronger than if we imagined the cause not 
to be present. 

When I said that we are affected by the image of an 
object in the future or the past with the same emotion 


ye 
nye 


OF HUMAN BONDAGE 263 


with which we should be affected if the object we 
imagined were actually present, I was careful to warn 
the reader that this was true in so far only as we attend 
to the image alone of the object itself, for the image 
is of the same nature whether we have imagined the 
object or not; but I have not denied that the image 
becomes weaker when we contemplate as present other 
objects which exclude the present existence of the 
future object. 

The image of a past or future object, that is to say, 
of an object which we contemplate in relation to the 
past or future to the exclusion of the present, other 
things being equal, is weaker than the image of a 
present object, and consequently the emotion towards 
a future or past object, other things being equal, is 
weaker then than the emotion towards a present object. 

The desire which springs from a knowledge of good 
and evil can be easily extinguished or restrained, in so 
far as this knowledge is connected with the future, by 
the desire of things which in the present are sweet. 


II 


In so far as we imagine any object to be necessary 
do we affirm its existence, and, on the other hand, we 
deny its existence in so far as we imagine it to be not 
necessary and therefore the emotion towards an object 
which we imagine as necessary, other things being 
equal, is stronger than that towards an object that is 
possible, contingent, or not necessary. 

In so far as we imagine an object as contingent, we 
are not affected by the image of any other object which 
posits the existence of the first, but, on the contrary 


264 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


(by hypothesis), we imagine some things which exclude 
its present existence. But in so far as we imagine any 
object in the future to be possible do we imagine some 
things which posit its existence, that is to say, things 
which foster hope or fear, and therefore the emotion 
towards an object which we know does not exist in 
the present, and which we imagine as possible, other 
things being equal, is stronger than the emotion to- 
wards a contingent object. 

The emotion towards an object which we imagine to 
exist in the present is stronger than if we imagined it 
as future, and is much stronger if we imagine the 
future to be at a great distance from the present time. 
The emotion, therefore, towards an object which we 
imagine will not exist for a long time is so much feebler 
than if we imagined it as present, and nevertheless is 
stronger than if we imagined it as contingent; and 
therefore the emotion towards a contingent object is 
much feebler than if we imagined the object to be 
present to us. 

In so far as we imagine an object as contingent, we 
are affected with no image of any other object which 
posits the existence of the first. On the contrary, we 
imagine (by hypothesis) certain things which exclude 
its present existence. But in so far as we imagine it in 
relationship to past time are we supposed to imagine 
something which brings it back to the memory or which 
excites its image and therefore so far causes us to con- 
template it as present. Therefore, the emotion towards 
a contingent object which we know does not exist in 
the present, other things being equal, will be weaker 
than the emotion towards a past object. 


OF HUMAN BONDAGE 265 


In these propositions I consider that I have explained 
why men are more strongly influenced by an opinion 
than by true reason, and why the true knowledge of 
good and evil causes disturbance in the mind, and 
often gives way to every kind of lust, whence the say- 
ing of the poet, “Video meliora proboque, deteriora 
sequor.” The same thought appears to have been in 
the mind of the Preacher when he said, “He that m- 
creaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.’ I say these 
things not because I would be understood to conclude, 
therefore, that it is better to be ignorant than to be 
wise, or that the wise man in governing his passions is 
nothing better than the fool, but I say them because it 
is necessary for us to know both the strength and weak- 
ness of our nature, so that we may determine what rea- 
son can do and what it cannot do in governing our 
emotions. 


CHAPTER XV 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 


Introductory 


I HAVE briefly explained the causes of human impo- 
tence and want of stability, and why men do not obey 
the dictates of reason. It remains for me now to show 
what it is which reason prescribes to us, which emotions 
agree with the rules of human reason, and which, on 
the contrary, are opposed to these rules. Before, how- 
ever, I begin to demonstrate these things by our full 
method, I should like briefly to set forth here these 
dictates of reason, in order that what I have in my 
mind about them may be easily comprehended by all. 

Since reason demands nothing which is opposed to 
Nature, it demands, therefore, that every person should 
love himself, should seek his own profit—what is truly 
profitable to him—should desire everything that really 
leads man to greater perfection, and absolutely that 
every one should endeavor, as far as in him lies, to 
preserve his own being. This is all true as necessarily 
as that the whole is greater than its part. Again, since 
virtue means nothing but acting according to the laws 
of our own nature, and since no one endeavors to 
preserve his being except in accordance with the laws 
of his own nature, it follows: Firstly, That the foun- 


dation of virtue is that endeavor itself to preserve our 
266 


ei 
wt 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 267 


own being, and that happiness consists in this—that a 
man can preserve his own being. Secondly, It follows 
that virtue is to be desired for its own sake, nor is 
there anything more excellent or more useful to us than 
virtue, for the sake of which virtue ought to be desired. 
Thirdly, It follows that all persons who kill themselves 
are impotent in mind, and have been thoroughly over- 
come by external causes opposed to their nature. 
Again, we can never free ourselves from the need of 
something outside us for the preservation of our being, 
and we can never live in such a manner as to have no 
intercourse with objects which are outside us. Indeed, 
so far as the mind is concerned, our intellect would be 
less perfect if the mind were alone, and understood 
nothing but itself. There are many things, therefore, 
outside us which are useful to us, and which, therefore, 
are to be sought. Of all these, none more excellent can 
be discovered than those which exactly agree with our 
nature. If, for example, two individuals of exactly the 
same nature are joined together, they make up a single 
individual, doubly stronger than each alone. Nothing, 
therefore, is more useful to man than man. Men can 
desire, I say, nothing more excellent for the preserva- 
tion of their being than that all should so agree at 
every point that the minds and bodies of all should 
form, as it were, one mind and one body; that all 
should together endeavor as much as possible to pre- 
serve their being, and that all should together seek the 
common good of all. From this it follows that men 
who are governed by reason—that is to say, men who, 
under the guidance of reason, seek their own profit— 
desire nothing for themselves which they do not desire 


268 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


for other men, and that, therefore, they are just, faith- 
ful, and honorable. 

These are those dictates of reason which I purposed 
briefly to set forth before commencing their demonstra- 
tion by a fuller method, in order that, if possible, I. 
might win the attention of those who believe that this 
principle—that every one is bound to seek his own 
profit—is the foundation of impiety, and not of vir- 
tue and piety. 


The Essence of Virtue 
I 


According to the laws of his own nature each person 
necessarily desires that which he considers to be good, 
and avoids that which he considers to be evil. 

The more each person strives and is able to seek 
his own profit, that is to say, to preserve his being, 
the more virtue does he possess; on the other hand, 
in so far as each person neglects his own profit, that is 
to say, neglects to preserve his own being, is he im- 
potent. 

No one, therefore, unless defeated by external 
causes and those which are contrary to his nature, neg- 
lects to seek his own profit or preserve his being. No 
one, I say, refuses food or kills himself from a ne- 
cessity of his nature, but only when forced by external — 
causes. The compulsion may be exercised in many 
ways. A man kills himself under compulsion by an- 
other when that other turns the right hand, with which 
the man had by chance laid hold of a sword, and com- 
pels him to direct the sword against his own heart; or 
the command of a tyrant may compel a man, as it did 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 269 


Seneca, to open his own veins, that is to say, he may 
desire to avoid a greater evil by a less. External 
and hidden causes also may so dispose his imagination 
and may so affect his body as to cause it to put on 
another nature contrary to that which it had at first, 
and one whose idea cannot exist in the mind; but a 
very little reflection will show that it is as impossible 
that a man, from the necessity of his nature, should en- 
deavor not to exist, or to be changed into some other 
form, as it is that something should be begotten from 
nothing. | 

The endeavor after self-preservation is the essence 
itself of a thing. If, therefore, any virtue could be con- 
ceived prior to this of self-preservation, the essence 
itself of the thing would be conceived as prior to itself, 
which (as is self-evident) is absurd. 

The endeavor after self-preservation is the primary 
and only foundation of virtue. For prior to this prin- 
ciple no other can be conceived, and without it no 
virtue can be conceived. 

No one endeavors to preserve his own being for the 
sake of another object. For if a man endeavored to 
preserve his being for the sake of any other object, 
this object would then become the primary foundation 
of virtue (as is self-evident), which is an absurdity. 

No one can desire to be happy, to act well and live 
well, who does not at the same time desire to be, to 
act, and to live, that is to say, actually to exist. 


II 


To act absolutely in conformity with virtue is noth- 
ing but acting according to the laws of our own proper 


270 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


nature. But only in so far as we understand do we 
act. Therefore, to act in conformity with virtue is 
nothing but acting, living, and preserving our being as 
reason directs, and doing so from the ground of seek- 
ing our own profit. 

In so far as a man is determined to action because 
he has inadequate ideas he suffers, that is to say, he 
does something which through his essence alone can- 
not be perceived, that is to say, which does not follow 
from his virtue. But in so far as he is determined to 
any action because he understands, he acts, that is to 
say he does something which is perceived through his 
essence alone, or which adequately follows from his 
virtue. 


The Highest Virtue of Reason 


All efforts which we make through reason are noth- 
ing but efforts to understand, and the mind, in so far 
as it uses reason, adjudges nothing as profitable to 
itself excepting that which conduces to understanding. 

The mind, in so far as it reasons, desires nothing 
but to understand, nor does it adjudge anything to be 
profitable to itself excepting what conduces to under- 


1. ..If it agreed better with a man’s nature that he should 
hang himself, could any reasons be given for his not hanging him- 
self? (Can such a nature possibly exist? If so, I maintain (whether 
I do or do not grant free will), that such an one, if he sees that he 
can live more conveniently on the gallows than sitting at his own 
table, would act most foolishly, if he did not hang himself. So 
any one who clearly saw that, by committing crimes, he would 
enjoy a really more perfect and better life and existence, than he 
could attain by the practice of virtue, would be foolish if he did 
not act on his convictions. For, with such a perverse human nature 
as his, crime would become virtue. From a letter to Wm. Blyenbergk 
(March 13, 1665). 





THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 271 


standing. But the mind possesses no certitude, unless 
in so far as it possesses adequate ideas, or in so far as 
it reasons. We do not know, therefore, that anything 
is certainly good, excepting that which actually con- 
duces to understanding, and, on the other hand, we do 
not know that anything is evil excepting that which 
can hinder us from understanding. 

The highest thing which the mind can understand 
is God, that is to say, Being absolutely infinite, and 
without whom nothing can be nor can be conceived, 
and therefore that which is chiefly profitable to the 
mind, or which is the highest good of the mind, is the 
knowledge of God. Again, the mind acts only in so 
far as it understands and only in so far can it be abso- 
lutely said to act in conformity with virtue. To under- 
stand, therefore, is the absolute virtue of the mind. 
But the highest thing which the mind can understand 
is God (as we have already demonstrated), and there- 
fore the highest virtue of the mind is to understand or 
know God. 


THE MORAL VALUE OF THE EMOTIONS 
I 
General Principles 


That which so disposes the human body that it can 
be affected in many ways, or which renders it capable 
of affecting external bodies in many ways, is profitable 
to man, and is more profitable in proportion as by its 
means the body becomes better fitted to be affected 
in many ways, and to affect other bodies; on the other 


Vie THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


hand, that thing is injurious which renders the body 
less fitted to affect or be affected. 

Whatever is effective to preserve the proportion of 
motion and rest which the parts of the human body 
bear to each other is good, and, on the contrary, that 
is evil which causes the parts of the human body to 
have a different proportion of motion and rest to each 
other. 

In what degree these things may injure or profit the 
mind will be explained below. Here I observe merely 
that I understand the body to die when its parts are 
so disposed as to acquire a different proportion of 
motion and rest to each other. For I dare not deny 
that the human body, though the circulation of the 
blood and the other things by means of which it is 
thought to live be preserved, may, nevertheless, be 
changed into another nature altogether different from 
its own. No reason compels me to affirm that the 
body never dies unless it is changed into a corpse. 
Experience, indeed, seems to teach the contrary. It 
happens sometimes that a man undergoes such changes 
that he cannot very well be said to be the same man, as 
was the case with a certain Spanish poet of whom I 
have heard, who was seized with an illness, and al- 
though he recovered, remained, nevertheless, so ob- 
livious of his past life that he did not believe the tales 
and tragedies he had composed were his own, and he 
might, indeed, have been taken for a grown-up child 
if he had also forgotten his native tongue. But if this 
seems incredible, what shall we say of children? The 
man of mature years believes the nature of children 
to be so different from his own, that it would be im- 





THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 273 


possible to persuade him he had ever been a child, if 
he did not conjecture regarding himself from what he 
sees of others. But in order to avoid giving to the 
superstitious matter for new questions, I prefer to go 
no farther in the discussion of these matters. 


II 
Value of Joy and Sorrow 


Joy is an emotion by which the body’s power of ac- 
tion is increased or assisted. Sorrow, on the other 
hand, is an emotion by which the body’s power of action 
is lessened or restrained, and therefore joy is not 
directly evil, but good; sorrow, on the other hand, is 
directly evil. 


III 
The Good Emotions 


Cheerfulness is joy, which, in so far as it is related 
to the body, consists in this, that all the parts of the 
body are equally affected, that is to say, the body’s 
power of action is increased or assisted, so that all the 
parts acquire the same proportion of motion and rest 
to each other. Cheerfulness, therefore, is always good, 
and can never be excessive. But melancholy is sor- 
row, which, in so far as it is related to the body con- 
sists in this, that the body’s power of action is abso- 
lutely lessened or restrained, and melancholy, therefore, 
is always evil. 

Pleasurable excitement is joy, which, in so far as 
it is related to the body, consists in this, that one or 
some of the parts of the body are affected more than 


274 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


others. The power of this emotion may, therefore, be 
so great as to overcome the other actions of the body. 
It may cling obstinately to the body; it may impede 
the body in such a manner as to render it less capable 
of being affected in many ways, and therefore may be 
evil. Again, pain, which, on the contrary, is sorrow, 
considered in itself alone cannot be good. But because 
its power and increase is limited by the power of an 
external cause compared with our own power, we can 
therefore conceive infinite degrees of strength of this 
emoticon, and infinite kinds of it, and we can therefore 
conceive it to be such that it can restrain an excess 
of pleasurable excitement, and so far (by the first 
part of this proposition) preventing the body from be- 
coming less capable. So far, therefore, will pain be good. 

Love is joy with the accompanying idea of an ex- 
ternal cause. Pleasurable excitement, therefore with 
the accompanying idea of an external cause, is love, 
and therefore love may be excessive. Again, desire is 
greater as the emotion from which it springs is greater. 
Inasmuch, therefore, as an emotion may overpower the 
other actions of a man, so also the desire which springs 
from this emotion may also overpower the other desires, 
and may therefore exist in the same excess which we 
have shown (in the preceding proposition) that pleas- 
urable excitement possesses. 

Cheerfulness, which I have affirmed to be good, is 
more easily imagined than observed; for the emotions 
by which we are daily agitated are generally related 
to some part of the body which is affected more than 
the others, and therefore it is that the emotions exist 
for the most part in excess, and so hold the mind down 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 275 


to the contemplation of one object alone, that it can 
think about nothing else; and although men are sub- 
ject to a number of emotions, and therefore few are 
found who are always under the control of one and the 
same emotion, there are not wanting those to whom one 
and the same emotion obstinately clings. We see men 
sometimes so affected by one object, that although 
it is not present, they believe it to be before them; 
and if this happens to a man who is not asleep, we say 
that he is delirious or mad. Nor are those believed 
to be less mad who are inflamed by love, dreaming 
about nothing but a mistress or harlot day and night, 
for they excite our laughter. But the avaricious man 
who thinks of nothing else but gain or money, and the 
ambitious man who thinks of nothing but glory, inas- 
much as they do harm, and are, therefore, thought 
worthy of hatred, are not believed to be mad. In 
truth, however, avarice, lust, etc., are a kind of mad- 
ness, although they are not reckoned amongst diseases. 


IV 
The Evil Emotions 


The man whom we hate we endeavor to destroy, 
that is to say we endeavor to do something which is 
evil. Therefore hatred can never be good.’ 

Envy, mockery, contempt, anger, revenge, and the 
other affects which are related to hatred or arise from 
it, are evil. 

Everything which we desire because we are affected 
by hatred is base and unjust in the State. 


1It is to be observed that here and in the following I understand 
by hatred, hatred towards men only. 


276 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


I make a great distinction between mockery (which 
I have said is bad) and laughter; for laughter and 
merriment are nothing but joy, and therefore, pro- 
vided they are not excessive, are in themselves good. 
Nothing but a gloomy and sad superstition forbids en- 
joyment. For why is it more seemly to extinguish 
hunger and thirst than to drive away melancholy? 
My reasons and my conclusions are these: No God 
and no human being, except an envious one, is delighted 
by my impotence or my trouble, or esteems as any 
virtue in us tears, sighs, fears, and others things of 
this kind, which are signs of mental impotence; on 
the contrary, the greater the joy with which we are 
affected, the greater the perfection to which we pass 
thereby, that is to say, the more do we necessarily 
partake of the divine nature. To make use of things, 
therefore, and to delight in them as much as possible 
(provided we do not disgust ourselves with them, which 
is not delighting in them), is the part of a wise man. 
It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and 
invigorate himself with moderate and pleasant eating 
and drinking, with sweet scents and the beauty of 
green plants, with ornament, with music, with sports, 
with the theater, and with all things of this kind which 
one man can enjoy without hurting another. For the 
human body is composed of a great number of parts 
of diverse nature, which constantly need new and 
varied nourishment, in order that the whole of the 
body may be equally fit for everything which can 
follow from its nature, and consequently that the mind 
may be equally fit to understand many things at once. 
This mode ot living best of all agrees both with our 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 277 


principles and with common practice; therefore this 
mode of living is the best of all, and is to be universally 
commended. There is no need, therefore, to enter 
more at length into the subject. 

All emotions of hatred are evil and therefore the man 
who lives according to the guidance of reason will 
strive as much as possible to keep himself from being 
agitated by the emotions of hatred and, consequently, 
will strive to keep others from being subject to the 
same emotions. But hatred is increased by reciprocal 
hatred, and, on the other hand, can be extinguished 
by love, so that hatred passes into love. Therefore he 
who lives according to the guidance of reason will 
strive to repay the hatred of another, etc., with love, 
that is to say, with generosity. He who wishes to 
avenge injuries by hating in return does indeed live 
miserably. But he who, on the contrary, strives to 
drive out hatred by love, fights joyfully and confidently, 
with equal ease resisting one man or a number of 
men, and needing scarcely any assistance from for- 
tune. Those whom he conquers yield gladly, not from 
defect of strength, but from an increase of it. These 
truths, however, all follow so plainly from the defini- 
tions alone of love and the intellect, that there is no 
need to demonstrate them singly. 


Vv 
Necessary Evils 
(1) 
The emotions of hope and fear cannot exist without 
sorrow; for fear is sorrow, and hope cannot exist with- 


278 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


out fear. Therefore these emotions cannot be good of 
themselves, but only in so far as they are able to 
testrain the excesses of joy. 

We may here add that these emotions indicate want 
of knowledge and impotence of mind, and, for the same 
reason, confidence, despair, gladness, and remorse are 
signs of weakness of mind. For although confidence 
and gladness are emotions of joy, they nevertheless 
suppose that sorrow has preceded them, namely, hope 
or fear. In proportion, therefore, as we endeavor to 
live according to the guidance of reason, shall we 
strive as much as possible to depend less on hope, to 
liberate ourselves from fear, to rule fortune, and 
to direct our actions by the sure counsels of reason. 

Humility is sorrow, which springs from this, that 
a man contemplates his own weakness. But in so far 
as a man knows himself by true reason is he supposed 
to understand his essence, that is to say, his power. 
If, therefore, while contemplating himself, he per- 
celves any impotence of his, this is not due to his 
understanding himself, but, as we have shown, to the 
fact that his power of actions is restrained. But if 
we suppose that he forms a conception of his own im- 
potence because he understands something to be more 
powerful than himself, by the knowledge of which he 
limits his own power of action, in this case we simply 
conceive that he understands himself distinctly, and 
his power of action is increased. Humility or sorrow, 
therefore, which arises because a man contemplates 
his own impotence, does not spring from true con- 
templation or reason, and is not a virtue, but a pas- 
sion. 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 279 


Repentance is not a virtue, that is to say, it does 
not spring from reason; on the contrary, the man who 
repents of what he has done is doubly wretched or 
impotent. For, in the first place, we allow ourselves to 
be overcome by a depraved desire, and, in the second 
place, by sorrow. 

Inasmuch as men seldom live as reason dictates, 
therefore these two emotions, humility and repentance, 
together with hope and fear, are productive of more 
profit than disadvantage, and therefore, since men must 
sin, it is better that they should sin in this way. For 
if men impotent in mind were all equally proud, were 
ashamed of nothing, and feared nothing, by what 
bonds could they be united or constrained? The mul- 
titude becomes a thing to be feared if it has nothing 
to fear. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that 
the prophets, thinking rather of the good of the com- 
munity than of a few, should have commended so 
greatly humility, repentance and reverence. Indeed, 
those who are subject to these emotions can be led much 
more easily than others, so that, at last, they come to 
live according to the guidance of reason, that is to say, 
become free men, and enjoy the life of the blessed. 


(ii) 

Pity is sorrow, and therefore is in itself evil. The 
good, however, which issues from pity, namely, that 
we endeavor to free from misery the man we pity, we 
desire to do from the dictate of reason alone; nor can 
we do anything except by the dictate of reason alone, 
which we are sure is good. Pity, therefore, in a man 


280 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


who lives according to the guidance of reason is in 
itself bad and unprofitable. 

Hence it follows that a man who lives according 
to the dictates of reason endeavors as much as possible 
to prevent himself from being touched by pity. 

The man who has properly understood that every- 
thing follows from the necessity of the divine nature, 
and comes to pass according to the eternal laws and 
rules of Nature, will in truth discover nothing which 
is worthy of hatred, laughter, or contempt, nor will 
he pity any one, but, so far as human virtue is able, 
he will endeavor to do well, as we say, and to rejoice. 
We must add also, that a man who is easily touched by 
the emotion of pity, and is moved by the misery or tears 
of another, often does something of which he after- 
ward repents, both because from an emotion we do 
nothing which we certainly know to be good, and also 
because we are so easily deceived by false tears. But 
this I say expressly of the man who lives according to 
the guidance of reason. For he who is moved neither 
by reason nor pity to be of any service to others is 
properly called inhuman; for he seems to be unlike 
a man. 

VI 


Diseased Emotions 


The primary foundation of virtue is the preserva- 
tion of our being according to the guidance of reason. 
The man, therefore, who is ignorant of himself is igno- 
rant of the foundation of all the virtues, and conse- 
quently is ignorant of all the virtues. Again, to act 
in conformity with virtue is nothing but acting ac- 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 28] 


cording to the guidance of reason, and he who acts ac- 
cording to the guidance of reason must necessarily 
know that he acts according to the guidance of reason. 
He, therefore, who is ignorant of himself, and conse. 
quently (as we have just shown) altogether ignorant 
of all the virtues, cannot in any way act in conformity 
with virtue, that is to say, is altogether impotent in 
mind. Therefore the greatest pride or despondency 
indicates the greatest impotence of mind. 

Hence follows, with the utmost clearness, that the 
proud and the desponding are above all others sub- 
ject to emotions. 

Despondency, nevertheless, can be corrected more 
easily than pride, since the former is an emotion of 
sorrow, while the latter is an emotion of joy, and is 
therefore stronger than the former. 

Pride is joy arising from a man’s having too high 
an opinion of himself. This opinion a proud man will 
endeavor, as much as he can, to cherish, and therefore, 
will love the presence of parasites or flatterers (the 
definitions of these people are omitted, because they 
are too well known), and will shun that of the noble- 
minded who think of him as is right. 

It would take too much time to enumerate here all 
the evils of pride, for the proud are subject to all 
emotions, but to none are they less subject than to those 
of love and pity. It is necessary, however, to observe 
here that a man is also called proud if he thinks too 
little of other people, and so, in this sense, pride is to 
be defined as joy which arises from the false opinion 
that we are superior to other people, while despond- 
ency, the contrary to this pride, would be defined as 


282 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


sorrow arising from the false opinion that we are in- 
ferior to other people. This being understood, it is 
easy to see that the proud man is necessarily envious, 
and that he hates those above all others who are the 
most praised on account of their virtues. It follows, 
too, that his hatred of them is not easily overcome 
by love or kindness and that he is delighted by the 
presence of those only who humor his weakness, and 
from a fool make him a madman. 

Although despondency is contrary to pride, the 
despondent man is closely akin to the proud man. For 
since the sorrow of the despondent man arises from his 
judging his own impotence by the power of virtue of 
others, his sorrow will be mitigated, that is to say, he 
will rejoice, if his imagination be occupied in contem- 
plating the vices of others. Hence the proverb— It 
is a consolation to the wretched to have bad compan- 
ions in their misfortunes. On the other hand, the more 
the despondent man believes himself to be below other 
people, the more will he sorrow; and this is the reason 
why none are more prone to envy than the despondent; 
and why they, above all others, try to observe men’s 
actions with a view to finding fault with them rather 
than correcting them, so that at last they praise noth- 
ing but despondency and glory in it; but in such a 
manner, however, as always to seem despondent. 

These things follow from this emotion as necessarily 
as it follows from the nature of a triangle that its 
three angles are equal to two right angles. It is true, 
indeed, that I have said that I call these and the like 
emotions evil, in so far as I attend to human profit 
alone; but the laws of Nature have regard to the com- 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 283 


mon order of Nature of which man is a part—a remark 
I desired to make in passing, lest it should be thought 
that I talk about the vices and absurdities of men rather 
than attempt to demonstrate the nature and properties 
of things. As I said, I consider human emotions and 
their properties precisely as I consider other natural 
objects; and, indeed, the emotions of man, if they do 
not show his power, show at least the power and work- 
manship of Nature, no less than many other things 
which we admire and delight to contemplate. 


VII 
Reasonable Emotions 


If we live according to the guidance of reason, we 
shall desire for others the good which we seek for our- 
selves. Therefore if we see one person do good to an- 
other, our endeavor to do good is assisted, that is to 
say, we shall rejoice, and our joy (by hypothesis) will 
be accompanied with the idea of the person who does 
good to the other, that is to say, we shall favor him. 
Favor is not opposed to reason, but agrees with it, 
and may arise from it. 

Indignation, as it is defined by us, is necessarily evil; 
but it is to be observed that when the supreme author- 
ity, constrained by the desire of preserving peace, 
punishes a citizen who injures another, I do not say 
that it is indignant with the citizen, since it is not 
excited by hatred to destroy him, but punishes him 
from motives of piety. 

Self-satisfaction is the joy which arises from a man’s 
contemplating himself and his power of action. But 


284 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


man’s true power of action or his virtue is reason itself, 
which he contemplates clearly and distinctly. Self- 
satisfaction therefore arises from reason. Again, man, 
when he contemplates himself, perceives nothing clearly 
and distinctly or adequately, excepting those things 
which follow from his power of action, that is to say, 
those things which follow from his power of under- 
standing; and therefore from this contemplation alone 
the highest satisfaction which can exist arises. 

Self-satisfaction is indeed the highest thing for 
which we can hope, for (as we have shown), no one 
endeavors to preserve his being for the sake of any 
end. Again, because this self-satisfaction is more and — 
more nourished and strengthened by praise, and, on 
the contrary more and more disturbed by blame, there- 
fore we are principally led by glory, and can scarcely 
endure life with disgrace. ; 

Self-exaltation is not opposed to reason, but may 
spring from it. 

What is called vainglory is self-satisfaction, nour- 
ished by nothing but the good opinion of the multi- 
tude, so that when that is withdrawn, the satisfaction, 
that is to say, the chief good which every one loves, 
ceases. For this reason those who glory in the good 
opinion of the mutitude anxiously and with daily care 
strive, labor, and struggle to preserve their fame. For 
the multitude is changeable and fickle, so that fame, if 
it be not preserved, soon passes away. As every one, 
moreover, is desirous to catch the praises of the people, 
one person will readily destroy the fame of another; 
and consequently, as the object of contention is what 
is commonly thought’ to be the highest good, a great 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 285 


desire arises on the part of every one to keep down 
his fellows by every possible means, and he who at 
last comes off conqueror boasts more because he has 
injured another person than because he has profited 
himself. This glory of self-satisfaction, therefore, is 
indeed vain, for it is really no glory. 

What is worthy of. notice with regard to shame may 


easily be gathered from what has been said about com- 


passion and repentance. I will only add that pity, like 
shame, although it is not a virtue, is nevertheless good, 
in so far as it shows that a desire of living uprightly 
is present in the man who is possessed with shame, just 
as pain is called good in so far as it shows that the 


injured part has not yet putrefied. A man, therefore, 


who is ashamed of what he has done, although he is 
sorrowful, is nevertheless more perfect that the shame- 


less man who has no desire of living uprightly. 


These are the things which I undertook to establish 


_ with regard to the emotions of joy and sorrow. With 


reference to the desires, these are good or evil as they 
spring from good or evil emotions. All of them, how- 
ever, in so far as they are begotten in us of emotions 
which are passions, are blind, as may easily be inferred 
from what has been said, nor would they be of any 
use if men could be easily persuaded to live according 
to the dictates of reason alone. 


The Life of Virtue 
I 


All our efforts or desires follow from the necessity 
of our nature in such a manner that they can be under- 


286 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


stood either through it alone as their proximate cause, 
or in so far as we are a part of Nature, which part 
cannot be adequately conceived through itself and with- 
out the other individuals. 


II 


The desires which follow from our nature in such a 
manner that they can be understood through it alone, 
are those which are related to the mind, in so far as it 
is conceived to consist of adequate ideas. The remain- 
ing desires are not related to the mind, unless in so far 
as it conceives things inadequately, whose power and 
increase cannot be determined by human power, but 
by the power of objects which are without us. The 
first kind of desires, therefore, are properly called 
actions, but the latter passions; for the first always 
indicate our power, and the latter, on the contrary, 
indicate our impotence and imperfect knowledge. 


III 


Our actions, that is to say, those desires which are 
determined by man’s power or reason, are always good; 
the others may be good as well as evil. 


IV 


It is therefore most profitable to us in life to make 
perfect the intellect or reason as far as possible, and 
in this one thing consists the highest happiness or 
blessedness of man; for blessedness is nothing but the 
peace of mind which springs from the intuitive knowl- 
edge of God, and to perfect the intellect is nothing but 
to understand God, together with the attributes and 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 287 


actions of God, which flow from the necessity of His 
nature. The final aim, therefore, of a man who is 
guided by reason, that is to say, the chief desire by 
which he strives to govern ali his other desires, is 
that by which he is led adequately to conceive him- 
self and all things which can be conceived by his in- 
telligence. 
V 


There is no rational life, therefore, without intel- 
ligence and things are good only in so far as they assist 
man to enjoy that life of the mind which is determined 
by intelligence. ‘Those things alone, on the other 
hand, we call evil which hinder man from perfecting 
his reason and enjoying a rational life. 


VI 


But because all those things of which man is the 
efficient cause are necessarily good, it follows that no 
evil can happen to man except from external causes, 
that is to say, except in so far as he Is a part of the 
whole of Nature, whose laws human nature is com- 
pelled to obey—compelled also to accommodate him- 
self to this whole of Nature in almost an infinite 
number of ways. 

VII 


It is impossible that a man should not be a part of 
Nature and follow her common order; but if he be 
placed amongst individuals who agree with his nature, 
his power of action will by that very fact be assisted 
and supported. But if, on the contrary, he be placed 
amongst individuals who do not in the least agree with 


288 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


his nature, he will scarcely be able without great change 
on his part to accommodate himself to them. 


VIII 


Anything that exists in Nature which we judge to 
be evil or able to hinder us from existing and enjoy- 
ing a rational life, we are allowed to remove from us 
in that way which seems the safest; and whatever, on 
the other hand, we judge to be good or to be profitable 
for the preservation of our being or the enjoyment of 
a rational life, we’ are permitted to take for our use 
and use in any way we may think proper; and abso- 
lutely, every one is allowed by the highest right of 
Nature to do that which he believes contributes to his 
own profit. 

ai 


Nothing, therefore, can agree better with the nature 
of any object than other individuals of the same kind, 
and so (see § vit) there is nothing more profitable to 
man for the preservation of his being and the enjoy- 
ment of a rational life than a man who is guided by 
reason. Again, since there is no single thing we know 
which is more excellent than a man who is guided by 
reason, it follows that there is nothing by which a 
person can better show how much skill and talent he 
possesses than by so educating men that at last they 
will live under the direct authority of reason. 


x 

In so far as men are carried away by envy or any 
emotion of hatred towards one another, so far are they 
contrary to one another, and consequently so much the 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 289 


more are they to be feared, as they have more power 
than other individuals of nature. 


XI 


Minds, nevertheless, are not conquered by arms, 
but by love and generosity. 


XII 


Above all things is it profitable to men to form com- 
munities and to unite themselves to one another by 
bonds which may make all of them as one man; and 
absolutely, it is profitable for them to do whatever 
may tend to strengthen their friendships. 


XIII 


But to accomplish this skill and watchfulness aré 
required; for men are changeable (those being very 
few who live according to the laws of reason), and 
nevertheless generally envious and more inclined to 
vengeance than pity. To bear with each, therefore, 
according to his disposition and to refrain from imitat- 
ing his emotions requires a singular power of mind. 
But those, on the contrary, who know how to revile 
men, to denounce vices rather than teach virtues, and 
not to strengthen men’s minds but to weaken them, are 
injurious both to themselves and others, so that many 
of them through an excess of impatience and a false 
zeal for religion prefer living with brutes rather than 
amongst men; just as boys or youths, unable to endure 
with equanimity the rebukes of their parents, fly to the 
army, choosing the discomforts of war and the rule of 
a tyrant rather than the comforts of home and the 


290 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


admonitions of a father, suffering all kinds of burdens 
to be imposed upon them in order that they may 
revenge themselves upon their parents. 


XIV 


Although, therefore, men generally determine every- 
thing by their pleasure, many more advantages than 
disadvantages arise from their common union. It 
is better, therefore, to endure with equanimity the 
injuries inflicted by them, and to apply our minds to 
those things which subserve concord and the establish- 
ment of friendship. 

XV 


The things which beget concord are those which 
are related to justice, integrity, and honor; for besides 
that which is unjust and injurious, men take ill also 
anything which is esteemed base, or that any one 
should despise the received customs of the State. But 
in order to win love, those things are chiefly necessary 
which have reference to religion and piety. 


XVI 


Concord, moreover, is often produced by fear, but 
it is without good faith. It is to be observed, too, that 
fear arises from impotence of mind, and therefore is 
of no service to reason; nor is pity, although it seems 
to present an appearance of piety. 


XVII 


Men also are conquered by liberality, especially 
those who have not the means wherewith to procure 
what is necessary for the support of life. But to assist 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 291 


every one who is needy far surpasses the strength or 
profit of a private person, for the wealth of a private 
person is altogether insufficient to supply such wants. 
Besides, the power of any one man is too limited for 
him to be able to unite every one with himself in friend- 
ship. The care, therefore, of the poor is incumbent 
on the whole of society and concerns only the general 
profit. 
XVIII 

In the receipt of benefits and in returning thanks, 

care altogether different must be taken. 


XIX 
The love of a harlot, that is to say, the lust of sexual 
intercourse, which arises from mere external form, 
and absolutely all love which recognizes any other 
cause than the freedom of the mind, easily passes into 
hatred, unless, which is worse, it becomes a species of 
delirium, and thereby discord is cherished rather than 
concord. 
xX 
With regard to marriage, it is plain that it is in ac- 
cordance with reason, if the desire of connection is 
engendered not merely by external form, but by a love 
of begetting children and wisely educating them; and 
if, in addition, the love both of the husband and wife 
has for its cause not external form merely, but chiefly 
liberty of mind. 


XXI 


Flattery, too, produces concord, but only by means 
of the disgraceful crime of slavery or perfidy; for 


292 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


there are none who are more taken by flattery than 
the proud, who wish to be first and are not so. 


XXIT 


There is a false appearance of piety and religion in 
dejection; and although dejection is the opposite of 
pride, the humble dejected man is very near akin to 
the proud. 

XXIII 


Shame also contributes to concord, but only with re- 
gard to those matters which cannot be concealed. 
Shame, too, inasmuch as it is a kind of sorrow, does 
not belong to the service of reason. 


XXIV 


The remaining emotions of sorrow which have man 
for their object are directly opposed to justice, in- 
tegrity, honor, piety, and religion; and although in- 
dignation may seem to present an appearance of 
equity, yet there is no law where it is allowed to every 
one to judge the deeds of another, and to vindicate 
his own or another’s right. 


XXV 


Affability, that is to say, the desire of pleasing men, 
which is determined by reason, is related to piety. 
But if affability arise from an emotion, it is ambition or 
desire, by which men, generally under a false pretense 
of piety, excite discords and seditions. For he who 
desires to assist other people, either by advice or by 
deed, in order that they may together enjoy the high- 
est good, will strive, above all things, to win their 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 293 


love, and not to draw them into admiration, so that a 
doctrine may be named after him, nor absolutely to 
give any occasion for envy. In common conversation, 
too, he will avoid referring to the vices of men, and 
will take care only sparingly to speak of human im- 
_ potence, while he will talk largely of human virtue or 
power, and of the way by which it may be made per- 
fect, so that men being moved not by fear or aversion, 
but solely by the emotion of joy, may endeavor as much 
as they can to live under the rule of reason. 


XXVI 


Excepting man, we know no individual thing in 
Nature in whose mind we can take pleasure, nor any 
thing which we can unite with ourselves by friendship 
or any kind of intercourse, and therefore regard to 
our own profit does not demand that we should preserve 
anything which exists in Nature excepting men, but 
teaches us to preserve it or destroy it in accordance 
with its varied uses, or to adapt it to our own service 
in any way whatever. __ 


XXVITI 


The profit which we derive from objects without us, 
over and above the experience and knowledge which we 
obtain because we observe them and change them from 
their existing forms into others, is chiefly the preserva- 
tion of the body, and for this reason those objects are 
the most profitable to us which can feed and nourish the 
body, so that all its parts are able properly to perform 
their functions. For the more capable the body is of 
being affected in many ways, and affecting external 


294 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


bodies in many ways, the more capable of thinking is 
the mind. But there seem to be very few things in Na- 
ture of this kind, and it is consequently necessary for 
the requisite nourishment of the body to use many 
different kinds of food; for the human body is com- 
posed of a great number of parts of different nature, 
which need constant and varied food in order that the 
whole of the body may be equally adapted for all 
those things which can follow from its nature, and con- 
sequently that the mind also may be equally adapted 
to conceive many things. 


XXVITI 


The strength of one man would scarcely suffice to 
obtain these things if men did not mutually assist one 
another. As money has presented us with an abstract 
of everything, it has come to pass that its image above 
every other usually occupies the mind of the multitude, 
because they can imagine hardly any kind of joy with- 
out the accompanying idea of money as its cause. 


XXTX 


This, however, is a vice only in those who seek 
money not from poverty or necessity, but because they 
have learned the arts of gain, by which they keep up a 
grand appearance. As for the body itself, they feed 
it in accordance with custom, but sparingly, because 
they believe that they lose so much of their goods 
as they spend upon the preservation of their body. 
Those, however, who know the true use of money, and 
regulate the measure of wealth according to their 
needs, live contented with few things. 


THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE MORAL LIFE 295 


XXK 


Since, therefore, those things are good which help 
the parts of the body to perform their functions, and 
since joy consists in this, that the power of man, In 
so far as he is made up of mind and body, is helped 
or increased, it follows that all things which bring 
joy are good. But inasmuch as things do not work to 
this end—that they may affect us with joy—nor is 
their power of action guided in accordance with our 
profit, and finally, since joy is generally related chiefly 
to some one part of the body, it follows that generally 
the emotions of joy (unless reason and watchfulness be 
present), and consequently the desires which are be- 
gotten from them, are excessive. It is to be added, 
that an emotion causes us to put that thing first which 
is sweet to us in the present, and that we are not able 
to judge the future with an equal emotion of the mind. 


XXXI 


Superstition, on the contrary, seems to affirm that 
what brings sorrow is good, and, on the contrary, that 
what brings joy is evil. But, as we have already said, 
no one, excepting an envious man, is delighted at my 
impotence or disadvantage, for the greater the joy 
with which we are affected, the greater the perfection 
to which we pass, and consequently the more do we 
participate in the divine nature; nor can joy ever be 
evil which is controlled by a true consideration for our 
own profit. On the other hand, the man who is led 
by fear, and does what is good that he may avoid 
what is evil, is not guided by reason. 


296 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


XXXII 


But human power is very limited, and _is infinitely 
surpassed by the power of external causes, so that we 
do not possess an absolute power to adapt to our serv- 
ice the things which are without us. Nevertheless we 
shall bear with equanimity those things which happen 
to us contrary to what a consideration of our own 
profit demands, if we are conscious that we have per- 
formed our duty, that the power we have could not 
reach so far as to enable us to avoid those things, and 
that we are a part of the whole of Nature, whose order 
we follow. If we clearly and distinctly understand this, 
the part of us which is determined by intelligence, that 
is to say, the better part of us, will be entirely satisfied 
therewith, and in that satisfaction will endeavor to 
persevere; for, in so far as we understand, we can- 
not desire anything excepting what is necessary, nor, 
absolutely, can we be satisfied with anything but the 
truth. Therefore in so far as we understand these 
things properly will the efforts of the better part of 
us agree with the order of the whole of Nature. 


CHAPTER XVI 


OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF A. STATE? 


By the right and ordinance of Nature, I merely 
_mean those natural laws wherewith we conceive every 
individual to be conditioned by Nature, so as to live 
and act in a given way. For instance, fishes are nat- 
urally conditioned for swimming, and the greater for 
devouring the less; therefore fishes enjoy the water, 
and the greater devour the less by sovereign natural 
right. For it is certain that Nature, taken in the ab- 
stract, has sovereign right to do anything she can; 
in other words, her right is co-extensive with her power. 
_ ~The power of Nature is the power of God, which has 
sovereign right over all things; and, inasmuch as the 
power of Nature is simply the aggregate of the powers 
of all her individual components, it follows that every 
individual has sovereign right to do all that he can, 
in other words, the rights of an individual extend to 
the utmost-limits of his power as it has been condi- 
tioned. 
Now it is the sovereign law and right of Nature that 
each individual should endeavor to preserve itself as it 
is, without regard to anything but itself; therefore this 
sovereign law and right belongs to every individual, 
namely, to exist and act according to its natural condi- 


1 From the Tr. Th.-P., ch. xvi, same title. 
297 


298 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


tions. We do not here acknowledge any difference be- 
tween mankind and other individual natural entities, nor 
between men endowed with reason and those to whom 
reastn is unknown; nor between fools, madmen, and 
sane men. Whatsoever an individual does by the laws 
of its nature it has a sovereign right to do, inasmuch as 
It acts as it was conditioned by Nature, and cannot act 
otherwise. Wherefore among men, so long as they are 
considered as living under the sway of Nature, he who 
does not yet know reason, or who has not yet acquired 
the habit of virtue, acts solely according to the laws of 
his desire with as sovereign a right as he who orders 
his life entirely by the laws of reason. 

That is, as the wise man has sovereign right to do 
all that reason dictates, or to live according to the 
laws of reason, so also the ignorant and foolish man 
has sovereign right to do all that desire dictates, or to 
live according to the laws of desire. This is identical 
with the teaching of Paul, who acknowledges that 
previous to the law—that is, so long as men are con- 
sidered of as living under the sway of Nature, there 
is no sin. 

The natural right of the individual man is thus deter- 
mined, not by sound reason, but by desire and power. 
All are not naturally conditioned so as to act accord- 
ing to the laws and rules of reason; nay, on the con- 
trary, all men are born ignorant, and before they can 
learn the right way of life and acquire the habit of 
virtue, the greater part of their life, even if they have 
been well brought up, has passed away. Neverthe- 
less, they are in the meanwhile bound to live and pre- 
serve themselves as far as they can by the unaided 


OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF A STATE = 299 


impulses of desire. Nature has given them no other 
guide, and has denied them the present power of 
living according to sound reason; so that they are no 
more bound to live by the dictates of an enlightened 
mind than a cat is bound to live by the laws of the 
nature of a lion. 

Whatsoever, therefore, an individual, considered as 
under the sway of Nature, thinks useful for himself, 
whether led by sound reason or impelled by the pas- 
sions, that he has a sovereign right to seek and to 
take for himself as he best can, whether by force, cun- 
ning, entreaty, or any other means; consequently he 
may regard as an enemy any one who hinders the 
accomplishment of his purpose. 

It follows from what we have said that the right 
and ordinance of Nature, under which all men are 
born, and under which they mostly live, only prohibits 
such things as no one desires, and no one can attain: 
it does not forbid strife, nor hatred, nor anger, nor 
deceit, nor, indeed, any of the means suggested by 
desire. | 

This we need not wonder at, for Nature is not 
bounded by the laws of human reason, which aims only 
at man’s true benefit and preservation. Her limits are 
infinitely wider, and have reference to the eternal 
order of Nature, wherein man is but a speck. It is by 
the necessity of this alone that all individuals are 
conditioned for living and acting in a particular way. 
If anything, therefore, in Nature seems to us ridiculous, 
absurd, or evil, it is because we only know in part, and 
are almost entirely ignorant of the order and inter- 
dependence of Nature as a whole, and also because 


300 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


we want everything to be arranged according to the 
dictates of our human reason; in reality that which 
reason considers evil is not evil in respect to the order 
and laws of Nature as a whole, but only in respect to the 
Jaws of our reason. 

Nevertheless, no one can doubt that it is much 
better for us to live according to the laws and assured 
dictates of reason, for, as we said, they have men’s 
true good for their object. Moreover, every one 
wishes to live as far as possible securely beyond the 
reach of fear, and’ this would be quite impossible so 
long as every one did everything he liked, and reason’s 
claim was lowered to a par with those of hatred and 
anger. ‘There is no one who is not ill at ease in the 
midst of enmity, hatred, anger and deceit, and who 
does not seek to avoid them as much as he can. When 
we reflect that men without mutual help, or the aid 
of reason, must needs live most miserably, . . . we 
shall plainly see that men must necessarily come to an 
agreement to live together as securely and well as 
possible if they are to enjoy, as a whole, the rights 
which naturally belong to them as individuals, and 
their life should be no more conditioned by the force 
and desire of individuals, but by the power and will 
of the whole body. This end they will be unable to 
attain if desire be their only guide, for by the laws 
of desire each man is drawn in a different direction; 
they must, therefore, most firmly decree and establish 
that they will be guided in everything by reason, which 
nobody will dare openly to repudiate lest he should 
be taken for a madman, and will restrain any desire 
which is injurious to a man’s fellows, that they will 


OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF A STATE 301 


do to all as they would be done by, and that they will 
defend their neighbor’s rights as their own. 

How such a compact as this should be entered into, 
how ratified and established, we will now inquire. 

Now it is a universal law of human nature that no 
one ever neglects anything which he judges to be good, 
except with the hope of gaining a greater good, or 
from the fear of a greater evil; nor does any one en- 
dure an evil except for the sake of avoiding a greater 
evil, or gaining a greater good. That is, every one 
will, of two goods, choose that which he thinks the 
greatest; and, of two evils that which he thinks the 
least. I say advisedly that which he thinks the greatest 
or the least, for it does not necessarily follow that he 
judges right. This law is so deeply implanted in the 
human mind that it ought to be counted among eternal 
truths and axioms. 

As a necessary consequence of the principle just 
enunciated, no one can honestly promise to forego the 
right which he has over all things,’ and in general no 
one will abide by his promises, unless under the fear 
of a greater evil, or the hope of a greater good. An 
example will make the matter clearer. Suppose that a 
robber forces me to promise that I will give him my 
goods at his will and pleasure. It is plain (inasmuch 
as my natural right is, as I have shown, co-extensive 
with my power) that if I can free myself from this 


1Jn the state of social life, where general right determines what 
is good or evil, stratagem is rightly distinguished as of two kinds, 
good and evil. But in the state of Nature, where every man is his 
own judge, possessing the absolute right to lay down laws for 
himself, to interpret them as he pleases, or to abrogate them if 
he thinks it convenient, it is not conceivable that stratagem should 
be evil. 


302 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


robber by stratagem, by assenting to his demands, I 
have the natural right to do so, and to pretend to 
accept his conditions. Or, again, suppose I have gen- 
uinely promised some one that for the space of twenty 
days I will not taste food or any nourishment; and 
suppose I afterwards find that my promise was foolish, 
and cannot be kept without very great injury to my- 
self; as I am bound by natural law and right to choose 
the least of two evils, I have complete right to break 
any compact, and act as if my promise had never been 
uttered. I say that I should have perfect natural right 
to do so, whether I was actuated by true and evident 
reason, or whether I was actuated by mere opinion in 
thinking I had promised rashly; whether my reasons 
were true or false, I should be in fear of a greater evil, 
which, by the ordinance of Nature, I should strive to 
avoid by every means in my power. 

We may, therefore, conclude that a compact is only 
made valid by its utility, without which it becomes 
null and void. It is therefore foolish to ask a man 
to keep his faith with us forever, unless we also en- 
deavor that the violation of the compact we enter 
into shall involve for the violator more harm than 
good. This consideration should have very great 
weight in forming a state. However, if all men could 
be easily led by reason alone, and could recognize what 
is best and most useful for a state, there would be no 
one who would not forswear deceit, for every one 
would keep most religiously to their compact in their 
desire for the chief good, namely, the preservation of 
the state, and would cherish good faith above all things 
as the shield and buckler of the commonwealth. How- 


ay, 


OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF A STATE 303 


ever, it is far from being the case that all men can 
always be easily led by reason alone; every one is 
drawn away by his pleasure, while avarice, ambition, 
envy, hatred, and the like so engross the mind that 
reason has no place therein. Hence, though men make 
promises with all the appearances of good faith, and 
agree that they will keep to their engagement, no one 
can absolutely rely on another man’s promise unless 
there is something behind it. Every one has by Nature 
a right to act deceitfully, and to break his compacts, 
unless he be restrained by the hope of some greater 
good, or the fear of some greater evil. 

However, as we have shown that the natural right 
of the individual is only limited by his power, it is 
clear that by transferring, either willingly or under 
compulsion, this power into the hands of another, he 
in so doing necessarily cedes also a part of his right; 
and, further, that the sovereign right over all men 
belongs to him who has sovereign power, wherewith 
he can compel men by force, or restrain them by 
threats of the universally feared punishment of death. 
Such sovereign right he will retain only so long as he 
can maintain his power of enforcing his will; otherwise 
he will totter on his throne, and no one who is stronger 
than he will be bound unwillingly to obey him. 

In this manner a society can be formed without 
any violation of natural right, and the covenant can 
always be strictly kept—that is, if each individual 
hands over the whole of his power to the body politic, 
the latter will then possess sovereign natural right over 
all things; that is, it will have sole and unquestioned 
dominion, and every one will be bound to obey, under 


304 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


pain of the severest punishment. A body politic of 
this kind is called a Democracy, which may be defined 
as a society which wields all its power as a whole. 
The sovereign power is not restrained by any laws, but 
every one is bound to obey it in all things; such is the 
state of things implied when men either tacitly or 
expressly handed over to it all their power of self- 
defense, or in other words, all their right. For if they 
had wished to retain any right for themselves, they 
ought to have taken precautions for its defense and 
preservation. As they have not done so, and indeed 
could not have done so without dividing and conse- 
quently ruining the state, they placed themselves abso- 
lutely at the mercy of the sovereign power; and, there- 
fore, having acted (as we have shown) as reason and 
necessity demanded, they are obliged to fulfill the com- 
mands of the sovereign power, however absurd these 
may be, else they will be public enemies, and will act 
against reason, which urges the preservation of the 
state as a primary duty. For reason bids us choose 
the lesser of two evils. 

Furthermore, this danger of submitting absolutell 
to the dominion and will of another, is one which may 
be incurred with a light heart: for we have shown that 
sovereigns only possess this right of imposing their 
will, so long as they have the full power to enforce it. 
If such power be lost their right to command is lost 
also, or lapses to those who have assumed it and can 
keep it. Thus it is very rare for sovereigns to impose 
thoroughly irrational commands, for they are bound 
to consult their own interests, and retain their power 
by consulting the public good and acting according to 


OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF A STATE = 305 


the dictates of reason, as Seneca says, “violenta imperia 
nemo continuit dtu.’ No one can long retain q4 
tyrant’s sway. 

In a democracy, irrational commands are still less 
to be feared: for it is almost impossible that the ma- 
jority of a people, especially if it be a large one, should 
agree in an irrational design: and, moreover, the basis 
and aim of a democracy is to avoid the desires as irra- 
tional, and to bring men as far as possible under the 
control of reason, so that they may live in peace and 
harmony. If this basis be removed the whole fabric 
falls to ruin. 

Such being the ends in view for the sovereign power, 
the duty of subjects is, as I have said, to obey its 
commands, and to recognize no right save that which 
it sanctions. 

It will, perhaps, be thought that we are turning 
subjects into slaves, for slaves obey commands and 
free men live as they like; but this idea is based on a 
misconception, for the true slave is he who is led away 
by his pleasures and can neither see what is good 
for him nor act accordingly: he alone is free who lives 
with free consent under the entire guidance of 
reason. 

Action in obedience to orders does take away free- 
dom in a certain sense, but it does not, therefore, make 
a man a slave; all depends on the object of the action. 
If the object of the action be the good of the state, and 
not the good of the agent, the latter is a slave and 
does himself no good; but in a state or kingdom where 
the weal of the whole people, and not that of the ruler, 
is the supreme law, obedience to the sovereign power 


306 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


does not make @ man a slave, of no use to himself, but 
a subject. Therefore, that state is the freest whose 
laws are founded on sound reason, so that every mem- 
ber of it may, if he will, be free; * that is, live with 
full consent under the entire guidance of reason. 

Children, though they are bound to obey all the 
commands of their parents, are yet not slaves; for the 
commands of parents look generally to the children’s 
benefit. 

We must, therefore, acknowledge a great differ- 
ence between a slave, a son, and a subject; their posi- 
tions may be thus defined. A slave is one who is bound 
to obey his master’s orders, though they are given 
solely in the master’s interest; a son is one who obeys 
his father’s orders, given in his own interest; a subject 
obeys the orders of the sovereign power, given for the 
common interest, wherein he is included. 

I think I have now shown sufficiently clearly the 
basis of a democracy. I have especially desired to do 
so, for I believe it to be of all forms of government 
the most natural, and the most consonant with indi- 
vidual liberty. In it no one transfers his natural right 
so absolutely that he has no further voice in affairs; 
he only hands it over to the majority of a society, 
whereof he is a unit. Thus all men remain, as they 
were in the state of Nature, equals. 


1 Whatever be the social state a man finds himself in, he may be 
free. For certainly a man is free, in so far as he is led by reason. 
Now reason (though Hobbes thinks otherwise) is always on the 
side of peace, which cannot be attained unless the general laws of 
the state be respected. Therefore the more a man is led by reason 
—in other words, the more he is free, the more constantly will he 
respect the laws of his country, and obey the commands of the 
sovereign power to which he is subject. 


OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF A STATE 307 


This is the only form of government which I have 
treated of at length, for it is the one most akin to my 
purpose of showing the benefits of freedom in a state. 

I may pass over the fundamental principles of other 
forms of government, for we may gather from what 
has been said whence their right arises without going 
into its origin. The possessor of sovereign power, 
whether he be one, or many, or the whole body politic, 
has the sovereign right of imposing any commands he 
pleases; and he who has either voluntarily, or under 
compulsion, transferred the right to defend him to 
another, has, in so doing, renounced his natural right 
and is therefore bound to obey, in all things, the 
commands of the sovereign power; and will be bound 
so to do so long as the king, or nobles, or the people 
preserve the sovereign power which formed the basis 
of the original transfer. I need add no more. 

The bases and rights of dominion being thus dis- 
played, we shall readily be able to define private civil 
right, wrong, justice, and injustice, with their relations 
to the state; and also to determine what constitutes an 
ally, or an enemy, or the crime of treason. 

By private civil right we can only mean the liberty 
every man possesses to preserve his existence, a liberty 
limited by the edicts of the sovereign power, and pre- 
served only by its authority. For when a man has 
transferred to another his right of living as he likes, 
which was only limited by his power, that is, has trans- 
ferred his liberty and power of self-defense, he is 
bound to live as that other dictates, and to trust to 
him entirely for his defense. Wrong takes place when 
a citizen, or subject, is forced by another to undergo 


308 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


some loss or pain in contradiction to the authority of 
the law, or the edict of the sovereign power. 

Wrong is conceivable only in an organized com- 
munity; nor can it ever accrue to subjects from any 
act of the sovereign, who has the right to do what 
he likes. It can only arise, therefore, between private 
persons, who are bound by law and right not to injure 
one another. Justice consists in the habitual rendering 
to every man his lawful due; injustice consists in de- 
priving a man, under the pretense of legality, of what 
the laws, rightly interpreted, would allow him. These 
last are also called equity and inequity, because those 
who administer the laws are bound to show no respect 
of persons, but to account all men equal, and to de- 
fend every man’s right equally, neither envying the 
rich nor despising the poor. 

The men of two states become allies, when for the 
sake of avoiding war, or for some other advantage, 
they covenant to do each other no hurt, but, on the 
contrary, to assist each other if necessity arises, each 
retaining his independence. Such a covenant is valid 
so long as its basis of danger or advantage is in force: 
no one enters into an engagement, or is bound to stand 
by his compacts unless there be a hope of some accru- 
ing good, or the fear of some evil: if this basis be 
removed the compact thereby becomes void: this has 
been abundantly shown by experience. For although 
different states make treaties not to harm one another, 
they always take every possible precaution against 
such treaties being broken by the stronger party, and 
do not rely on the compact, unless there is a sufficiently 
obvious object and advantage to both parties in ob- 


OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF A STATE = 309 


serving it. Otherwise they would fear a breach of 
faith, nor would there be any wrong done thereby; 
fer who in his proper senses, and aware of the right 
of the sovereign power, would trust in the promises 
of one who has the will and the power to do what he 
likes, and who aims solely at the safety and advantage 
of his dominion? Moreover, if we consult loyalty 
and religion, we shall see that no one in possession of 
power ought to abide by his promises to the injury of 
his dominion; for he cannot keep such promises with- 
out breaking the engagement he made with his sub- 
jects, by which both he and they are most solemnly 
bound. 

An enemy is one who lives apart from the state, and 
does not recognize its authority either as a subject or as 
an ally. It is not hatred which makes a man an 
enemy, but the rights of the state. The rights of the 
state are the same in regard to him who does not recog- 
nize by any compact the state authority, as they are 
against him who has done the state an injury. It has 
the right to force him, as best it can, either to submit, 
or to contract an alliance. 

Lastly, treason can only be committed by subjects, 
who by compact, either tacit or expressed, have trans- 
ferred all their rights to the state. A subject is said 
to have committed this crime when he has attempted, 
for whatever reason, to seize the sovereign power, or 
to place it in different hands. I say, kas attempted, 
for if punishment were not to overtake him till he 
had succeeded, it would often come too late, the sover- 
eign rights would have been acquired or transferred 
already. 


310 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


I also say, has attempted, for whatever reasons, to 
seize the sovereign power, and I recognize no differ- 
ence whether such an attempt should be followed by 
public loss or public gain. Whatever be his reason for 
acting, the crime is treason, and he is rightly con- 
demned. In war, every one would admit the justice of 
his sentence. If aman does not keep to his post, but 
approaches the enemy without the knowledge of his 
commander, whatever may be his motive, so long as 
he acts on his own motion, even if he advances with 
the design of defeating the enemy, he is rightly put 
to death, because he has violated his oath, and in- 
fringed the rights of his commander. That all citizens 
are equally bound by these rights in time of peace, is 
not so generally recognized, but the reasons for obedi- 
ence are in both cases identical. The state must be 
preserved and directed by the sole authority of the 
sovereign, and such authority and right have been 
accorded by universal consent to him alone. If, there- 
fore, any one else attempts, without his consent, to 
execute any public enterprise, even though the state 
might (as we said) reap benefit therefrom, such person 
has none the less infringed the sovereign’s right, and 
would be rightly punished for treason. 

In order that every scruple may be removed, we may 
now answer the inquiry, whether our former assertion 
that every one who has not the practice of reason, may, 
in the state of Nature, live by sovereign natural right, 
according to the laws of his desires, is not in direct 
opposition to the law and right of God as revealed. 
For as all men absolutely (whether they be less en- 
dowed with reason or more) are equally bound by the 


Aor 


OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF A STATE © 311 


Divine command to love their neighbor as themselves, 
it may be said that they cannot, without wrong, do 
injury to any one, or live according to their desires. 

This objection, so far as the state of Nature is con- 
cerned, can be easily answered, for the state of Nature 
is, both in nature and in time, prior to religion. No 
one knows by nature that he owes any obedience to 
God,* nor can he attain thereto by any exercise of his 
reason, but solely by revelation confirmed by signs. 
Therefore, previous to revelation, no one is bound by a 
Divine law and right of which he is necessarily in 
ignorance. The state of Nature must by no means be 
confounded with a state of religion, but must be con- 


1 When Paul says that men have in themselves no refuge, he 
speaks as a man: for in the ninth chapter of the same Epistle he 
expressly teaches that God has mercy on whom He will, and that 
men are without excuse, only because they are in God’s power like 
clay in the hands of a potter, who out of the same lump makes 
vessels, some for honor and some for dishonor, not because they 
have been forewarned. As regards the Divine natural law whereof 
the chief commandment is, as we have said, to love God, I have 
called it a law in the same sense, as philosophers style laws those 
general rules of Nature, according to which everything happens. 
For the love of God is not a state of obedience: it is a virtue 
which necessarily exists in a man who knows God rightly. Obedience 
has regard to the will of a ruler, not to necessity and truth. Now 
aS we are ignorant of the nature of God’s will, and on the other 
hand know that everything happens solely by God’s power, we 
cannot, except through revelation, know whether God wishes in any 
way to be honored as a sovereign. 

Again; we have shown that the Divine rights appear to us in the 
light of rights or commands, only so long as we are ignorant of their 
cause: as soon as their cause is known, they cease to be rights, and 
we embrace them no longer as rights but as eternal truths; in other 
words, obedience passes into love of God, which emanates from 
true knowledge as necessarily as light emanates from the sun. Reason 
then leads us to love God, but cannot lead us to obey Him; for we 
cannot embrace the commands of God as Divine, while we are in 
ignorance of their cause, neither can we rationally conceive God 
aS.a sovereign laying down laws as a sovereign. 


y12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


ceived as without either religion or law, and conse- 
quently without sin or wrong. This is how we have de- 
scribed it, and we are confirmed by the authority of 
Paul. It is not only in respect of ignorance that we 
conceive the state of Nature as prior to, and lacking 
the Divine revealed law and right; but in respect of 
freedom also, wherewith all men are born en- 
dowed: 7." 

It may be insisted that sovereigns are as much 
bound by the Divine law as subjects; whereas we have 
asserted that they retain their natural rights, and 
may do whatever they like. 

In order to clear up the whole difficulty, which arises 
rather concerning the natural right than the natural 
state, I maintain that every one is bound, in the state 
of Nature, to live according to Divine law, in the same 
way as he is bound to live according to the dictates of 
sound reason; namely, inasmuch as it is to his ad- 
vantage, and necessary for his salvation; but, if he 
will not so live, he may do otherwise at his own risk. 
He is thus bound to live according to his own laws, 
not according to any one else’s, and to recognize no 
man as a judge, or as a superior in religion. Such, in 
my opinion, is the position of a sovereign, for he may 
take advice from his fellow men, but he is not bound 
to recognize any as a judge, nor any one besides him- 
self as an arbitrator on any question of right, unless 
it be a prophet sent expressly by God and attesting his 
mission by indisputable signs. Even then he does not 
recognize a man, but God Himself as his judge. 

If a sovereign refuses to obey God as revealed in 
His law, he does so at his own risk and loss, but with- 


OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF A STATE 313 


out violating any civil or natural right. For the civil 
right is dependent on his own decree; and natural 
right is dependent on the laws of Nature, which latter 
are not adapted to religion, whose sole aim is the 
good of humanity, but to the order of Nature—that 
is, to God’s eternal decree unknown to us. 

This truth seems to be adumbrated in a somewhat 
obscurer form by those who maintain that men can 
sin against God’s revelation, but not against the eternal 
decree by which He has ordained all things... . 


CHAPTER XVII 


OF SUPREME AUTHORITIES 


I 
Of the Right of Supreme Authorities * 


UNpErR every dominion the state is said to be Civil; 
but the entire body subject to a dominion is called a 
Commonwealth, and the general business of the do- 
minion, subject to the direction of him that holds it, 
has the name of Affairs of State. Next we call men 
Citizens, as far as they enjoy by the civil law all the 
advantages of the commonwealth, and Subjects, as far 
as they are bound to obey its ordinances or laws. 
Lastly . . . of the civil state there are three kinds— 
democracy, aristocracy and monarchy. Now, before 
I begin to treat of each kind separately, I will first 
deduce ail the properties of the civil state in general. 
And of these, first of all comes to be considered the 
supreme right of the commonwealth, or the right of 
the supreme authorities. 

It is clear that the right of the supreme authorities 
is nothing else than simple natural right, limited, in- 
deed, by the power, not of every individual, but of 
the multitude, which is guided, as it were, by one mind 
—that is, as each individual in the state of Nature, so 


1¥From A Political Treatise, ch. iii., same title. 
314 


OF SUPREME AUTHORITIES 315 


the body and mind of a dominion have as much right 
as they have power. And thus each single citizen or 
subject has the less right, the more the commonwealth 
exceeds him in power, and each citizen consequently 
does and has nothing but what he may by the general 
decree of the commonwealth defend. 

If the commonwealth grant to any man the right, 
and therewith the authority (for else it is but a gift of 
words) to live after his own mind, by that very act it 
abandons its own right, and transfers the same to him, 
to whom it has given such authority. But if it has 
given this authority to two or more, I mean authority 
to live each after his own mind, by that very act it 
has divided the dominion, and if, lastly, it has given 
this same authority to every citizen, it has thereby 
destroyed itself, and there remains no more a common- 
wealth, but everything returns to the state of Nature; 
all of which is very manifest from what goes before. 
And thus it follows, that it can by no means be con- 
ceived, that every citizen should by the ordinance of 
the commonwealth live after his own mind, and accord- 
ingly this natural right of being one’s own judge ceases 
in the civil state. I say expressly “by the ordinance 
of the commonwealth,” for if we weigh the matter 
aright, the natural right of every man does not cease 
in the civil state. For man, alike in the natural and 
in the civil state, acts according to the laws of his 
own nature, and consults his own interest. Man, I say, 
in each state is led by fear or hope to do or leave 
undone this or that; but the main difference between 
the two states is this, that in the civil state all fear 
the same things, and all have the same ground of 


316 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


security, and manner of life; and this certainly does 
not do away with the individual’s faculty of judgment. 
For he that is minded to obey all the commonwealth’s 
orders, whether through fear of its power or through 
love of quiet, certainly consults after his own heart 
his own safety and interest. 

Moreover, we cannot even conceive, that every citi- 
zen should be allowed to interpret the commonwealth’s 
decrees or laws. For were every citizen allowed this, 
he would thereby be his own judge, because each would 
easily be able to give a color of right to his own deeds, 
which by the last section is absurd. 

We see, then, that every citizen depends not on him- 
self, but on the commonwealth, all whose commands 
he is bound to execute, and has no right to decide, 
what is equitable or iniquitous, just or unjust. But, 
on the contrary, as the body of the dominion should, 
so to speak, be guided by one mind, and consequently 
the will of the commonwealth must be taken to be the 
will of all; what the state decides to be just and good 
must be held to be so decided by every individual. 
And so, however iniquitous the subject may think 
the commonwealth’s decisions, he is none the less 
bound to execute them. 

But, it may be objected, is it not contrary to the 
dictate of reason to subject oneself wholly to the 
judgment of another, and, consequently, is not the civil 
state repugnant to reason? Whence it would follow 
that the civil state is irrational, and could only be 
created by men destitute of reason, not at all by such 
as are led by it. But since reason teaches nothing 
contrary to Nature, sound reason cannot therefore 


OF SUPREME AUTHORITIES 317 


dictate that every one should remain independent, so 
long as men are liable to passions, that is, reason pro- 
nounces against such independence. Besides, reason 
altogether teaches to seek peace, and peace cannot 
be maintained, unless the commonwealth’s general 
laws be kept unbroken. And so, the more a man is 
guided by reason, that is, the more he is free, the more 
constantly he will keep the laws of the commonwealth, 
and execute the commands of the supreme authority, 
whose subject he is. Furthermore, the civil state is 
naturally ordained to remove general fear, and prevent 
general sufferings, and therefore pursue above every- 
thing the very end, after which every one, who is led 
by reason, strives, but in the natural state strives 
vainly. Wherefore, if a man, who is led by reason, 
has sometimes to do by the commonwealth’s order 
what he knows to be repugnant to reason, that harm 
is far compensated by the good, which he derives from 
the existence of a civil state. For it is reason’s own 
law, to choose the less of two evils; and accordingly 
we may conclude that no one is acting against the 
dictate of his own reason, so far as he does what by 
the law of the commonwealth is to be done. And this 
any one will more easily grant us, after we have ex- 
plained how far the power and consequently the right 
of the commonwealth extends. 

For, first of all, it must be considered that, as m 
the state of Nature the man who is led by reason is 
most powerful and most independent, so too that com- 
monwealth will be most powerful and most indepen- 
dent which is founded and guided by reason. For 
the right .of. the commonwealth is determined by the 


318 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


power of the multitude, which is led, as it were, by 
one mind. But this unity of mind can in no wise be 
conceived, unless the commonwealth pursues chiefly 
the very end which sound reason teaches is to the 
interest of all men. 

In the second place it comes to be considered that 
subjects are so far dependent, not on themselves but 
on the commonwealth, as they fear its power or threats, 
or as they love the civil state. Whence it follows, 
that such things, as no one can be induced to do by 
rewards or threats, do not fall within the rights of 
the commonwealth. For instance, by reason of his 
faculty of judgment, it is in no man’s power to believe. 
For by what rewards or threats can a man be brought 
to believe that the whole is not greater than its part, 
or that God does not exist, or that that is an infinite 
being, which he sees to be finite, or, generally, anything 
contrary to his sense or thought? So, too, by what 
rewards or threats can a man be brought to love one 
whom he hates, or to hate one whom he loves? And 
to this head must likewise be referred such things as 
are so abhorrent to human nature, that it regards them 


as actually worse than any evil, as that a man should - 


be witness against himself, or torture himself, or kill his 
parents, or not strive to avoid death, and the like, to 
which no one can be induced by rewards or threats. 
But if we still choose to say that the commonwealth 
has the right or authority to order such things, we can 
conceive of it in no other sense than that in which 
one might say that a man has the right to be mad or 
delirious. For what but a delirious fancy would such 
a right be, as could bind no one? And here I am 


OF SUPREME AUTHORITIES JLo 


speaking expressly of such things as cannot be subject 
to the right of a commonwealth and are abhorrent to 
human nature in general. For the fact that a fool or 
madman can by no rewards or threats be induced to 
execute orders, or that this or that person, because he 
is attached to this or that religion, judges the laws 
of a dominion worse than any possible evil, in no wise 
makes void the laws of the commonwealth, since by 
them most of the citizens are restrained. And so, as 
those who are without fear or hope are so far inde- 
pendent, they are, therefore, enemies of the dominion, 
and may lawfully be coerced by force. 

Thirdly, and lastly, it comes to be considered that 
those things are not so much within the common- 
wealth’s right, which cause indignation in the majority. 
For it is certain, that by the guidance of Nature men 
conspire together, either through common fear, or with 
the desire to avenge some common hurt; and as the 
right of the commonwealth is determined by the com- 
mon power of the multitude, it is certain that the 
power and right of the commonwealth are so far di- 
minished, as it gives occasion for many to conspire 
together. There are certainly some subjects of fear 
for a commonwealth, and as every separate citizen or 
in the state of Nature every man, so a commonwealth 
is the less independent, the greater reason it has to 
fear. So much for the right of supreme authorities 
over subjects. Now before I treat of the right of the 
said authorities as against others, we had better resolve 
a question commonly mooted about religion. 

For it may be objected to us, Do not the civil state, 
and the obedience of subjects, such as we have shown 


320 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


is required in the civil state, do away with religion, 
whereby we are bound to worship God? But if we 
consider the matter, as it really is, we shall find noth- 
ing that can suggest a scruple. For the mind, so far 
as it makes use of reason, is dependent, not on the 
supreme authorities, but on itself. And so the true 
knowledge and the love of God cannot be subject to 
the dominion of any, nor yet can charity towards one’s 
neighbor. And if we further reflect that the highest 
exercise of charity is that which aims at keeping peace 
and joining in unity, we shall not doubt that he does 
his duty, who helps every one, so far as the common. 
wealth’s laws, that is, so far as unity and quiet allow. 
As for external rites, it is certain, that they can do no 
good or harm at all in respect of the true knowledge of 
God, and the love which necessarily results from it; 
and so they ought not to be held of such importance, 
that it should be thought worth while on their account 
to disturb public peace and quiet. Moreover, it is 
certain that I am not a champion of religion by the 
law of Nature, that is, by the divine decree. For I 
have no authority, as once the disciples of Christ had, 
to cast out unclean spirits and work miracles; which 
authority is yet so necessary to the propagating of re- 
ligion in places where it is forbidden, that without it 
one not only, as they say, wastes one’s time* and 
trouble, but causes besides very many inconveniences, 
whereof all ages have seen most mournful examples. 
Every one therefore, wherever he may be, can worship 
God with true religion, and mind his own business, 


1 Literally, “oil and trouble’—a common proverbial expression in 
Latin. 


OF SUPREME AUTHORITIES 321 


which is the duty of a private man. But the care of 
propagating religion should be left to God, or the 
supreme authorities, upon whom alone falls the charge 
of affairs of state. But I return to my subject. 

After explaining the right of supreme authorities 
over citizens and the duty of subjects, it remains to 
consider the right of such authorities against the world 
at large, which is now easily intelligible from what 
has been said. For since the right of the supreme 
authorities is nothing else but simple natural right, 
it follows that two dominions stand towards each other 
in the same relation as do two men in the state of 
Nature, with this exception, that a commonwealth can 
provide against being oppressed by another; which a 
man in the state of Nature cannot do, seeing that he 
is overcome daily by sleep, often by disease or mental 
infirmity, and in the end by old age, and is besides 
liable to other inconveniences, from which a common- 
wealth can secure itself. 

A commonwealth, then, is so far independent, as it 
can plan and provide against oppression by another, 
and so far dependent on another commonwealth, as it 
fears that other’s power, or is hindered by it from 
executing its own wishes, or, lastly, as it needs its help 
for its own preservation or increase. For we cannot 
at all doubt, that if two commonwealths are willing to 
offer each other mutual help, both together are more 
powerful, and therefore have more right, than either 
alone. 

But this will be more clearly intelligible if we re- 
flect that two commonwealths are naturally enemies. 
For men in the state of Nature are enemies. Those, 


322 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


then, who stand outside a commonwealth, and retain 
their natural rights, continue enemies. Accordingly, 
if one commonwealth wishes to make war on another 
and employ extreme measures to make that other de- 
pendent on itself, it may lawfully make the attempt, 
since it needs but the bare will of the commonwealth 
for war to be waged. But concerning peace it can 
decide nothing, save with the concurrence of another 
commonwealth’s will. When it follows that laws 
of war regard every commonwealth by itself, but laws 
of peace regard not one, but at the least two common- 
wealths, which are therefore called “contracting 
parties.” 

This ‘‘contract” remains so long unmoved as the 
motive for entering into it, that is, fear of hurt or 
hope of gain, subsists. But take away from either 
commonwealth this hope or fear, and it is left inde- 
pendent, and the link, whereby the commonwealths 
were mutually bound, breaks of itself. And therefore 
every commonwealth has the right to break its con- 
tract, whenever it chooses, and cannot be said to act 
treacherously or perfidiously in breaking its word, as 
soon as the motive of hope or fear is removed. For 
every contracting party was on equal terms in this 
respect, that whichever could first free itself of fear 
should be independent, and make use of its independ- 
ence after its own mind; and, besides, no one makes 
a contract respecting the future, but on the hypothesis 
of certain precedent circumstances. But when these 
circumstances change, the reason of policy applicable 
to the whole position changes with them; and there- 
fore every one of the contracting commonwealths re- 


A - ‘ = “ 


OF SUPREME AUTHORITIES Sys 


tains the right of consulting its own interest, and con- 
sequently endeavors, as far as possible, to be free 
from fear and thereby independent, and to prevent 
another from coming out of the contract with greater 
power. If then a commonwealth complains that it 
has been deceived, it cannot properly blame the bad 
faith of another contracting commonwealth, but only 
its own folly in having entrusted its own welfare to 
another party, that was independent, and had for its 
highest law the welfare of its own dominion. 

To commonwealths, which have contracted a treaty 
of peace, it belongs to decide the questions which may 
be mooted about the terms or rules of peace, whereby 
they have mutually bound themselves, inasmuch as 
laws of peace regard not one commonwealth, but the 
commonwealths which contract taken together. But 
if they cannot agree together about the conditions, 
they by that very fact return to a state of war. 

The more commonwealths there are, that have con- 
tracted a joint treaty of peace, the less each of them 
by itself is an object of fear to the remainder, or the 
less it has the authority to make war. But it is so 
much the more bound to observe the conditions of 
peace; that is, the less independent, and the more 
bound to accommodate itself to the general will of the 
contracting parties. 

But the good faith, inculcated by sound reason and 
religion, is not hereby made void; for neither reason 
nor Scripture teaches one to keep one’s word in every 
case. For if I have promised a man, for instance, to 
keep safe a sum of money he has secretly deposited 
with me, I am not bound to keep my word, from the 


324 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


time that I know or believe the deposit to have been 
stolen, but I shall act more rightly in endeavoring to 
restore it to its owners. So likewise, if the supreme 
authority has promised another to do something, which 
subsequently occasion or reason shows or seems to 
show is contrary to the welfare of its subjects, it is 
surely bound to break its word. As then Scripture 
only teaches us to keep our word in general, and leaves 
to every individual’s judgment the special cases of 
exception, it teaches nothing repugnant to what we 
have just proved. © 

But that I may not have so often to break the 
thread of my discourse, and to resolve hereafter similar 
objections, I would have it known that all this demon- 
stration of mine proceeds from the necessity of human 
nature, considered in what light you will—I mean, from 
the universal effort of all men after self-preservation, 
an effort inherent in all men, whether learned or un- 
learned. And therefore, however one considers men 
are led, whether by passion or by reason, it will be 
the same thing; for the demonstration, as we have 
said, is of universal application. 


II 
Of the Functions of Supreme Authorities * 


The right of the supreme authorities is limited by 
their power; the most important part of that right is, 
that they are, as it were, the mind of the dominion, 
whereby all ought to be guided; and accordingly, such 
authorities alone have the right of deciding what is 
good, evil, equitable or iniquitous, that is, what must 


1From A Political Treatise, ch. iv, same title. 


OF SUPREME AUTHORITIES 325 


be done or left undone by the subjects severally or 
collectively. And, accordingly, they have the sole 
right of laying down laws, and of interpreting the 
same, whenever their meaning is disputed, and of 
deciding whether a given case is in conformity with 
or violation of the laws; and, lastly, of waging war, 
and of drawing up and Berne propositions for price 
or of accepting such when offered. 

As all these functions, and also the means required 
to execute them, are matters which regard the whole 
body of the dominion, that is, are affairs of state, it 
follows that affairs of state depend on the direction 
of him only who holds supreme dominion. And hence 
it follows that it is the right of the supreme authority 
alone to judge the deeds of every individual, and de- 
mand of him an account of the same; to punish crim- 
inals, and decide questions of law between citizens, or 
appoint jurists acquainted with the existing laws, to 
administer these matters on its behalf; and, further, 
to use and order all means to war and peace, as to 
found and fortify cities, levy soldiers, assign military 
posts, and order what it would have done, and, with 
a view to peace, to send and give audience to ambassa- 
dors; and, finally, to levy the costs of all this. 

Since, then, it is the right of the supreme authority 
alone to handle public matters, or choose officials to do 
so, it follows that that subject is a pretender to the 
dominion, who, without the supreme council’s knowl- 
edge, enters upon any public matter, although he be- 
lieve that his design will be to the best interest of the 
commonwealth. 

But it is often asked, whether the supreme authority 


326 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


is bound by laws, and, consequently, whether it can 
do wrong. Now as the words “law” and “wrong- 
doing” often refer not merely to the laws of a common- 
wealth, but also to the general rules which concern all 
natural things, and especially to the general rules of 
reason, we cannot, without qualification, say that the 
commonwealth is bound by no laws, or can do no 
wrong. For were the commonwealth bound by no laws 
or rules, which removed, the commonwealth were no 
commonwealth, we should have to regard it not as a 
natural thing, but as a chimera. A commonwealth 
then does wrong, when it does, or suffers to be done, 
things which may be the cause of its own ruin; and we 
can say that it then does wrong, in the sense in which 
philosophers or doctors say that Nature does wrong; 
and in this sense we can say, that a commonwealth 
does wrong, when it acts against the dictate of reason. 
For a commonwealth is most independent when it acts 
according to the dictate of reason; so far, then, as it 
acts against reason, it fails itself, or does wrong. And 
we shall be able more easily to understand this if we 
reflect that when we say, that a man can do what he 
will with his own, this authority must be limited not 
only by the power of the agent, but by the capacity 
of the object. If, for instance, I say that I can right- 
fully do what I will with this table, I do not certainly 
mean that I have the right to make it eat grass. So, 
too, though we say, that men depend not on themselves, 
but on the commonwealth, we do not mean, that men 
lose their human nature and put on another; nor yet 
that the commonwealth has the right to make men 
wish for this or that, or (what is just as impossible) 





OF SUPREME AUTHORITIES 327 


regard with honor things which excite ridicule or dis- 
gust. But it is implied that there are certain inter- 
vening circumstances which supposed, one likewise 
supposes the reverence and fear of the subjects towards 
the commonwealth, and which abstracted, one makes 
abstraction likewise of that fear and reverence, and 
therewith of the commonwealth itself. The common- 
wealth, then, to maintain its independence, is bound 
to preserve the causes of fear and reverence, otherwise 
it ceases to be a commonwealth. For the person or 
persons that hold dominion can no more combine with 
the keeping up of majesty the running with harlots 
drunk or naked about the streets, or the performances 
of a stage-player, or the open violation or contempt 
of laws passed by themselves, than they can combine 
existence with non-existence. But to proceed to slay 
and rob subjects, ravish maidens, and the like, turns 
fear into indignation and the civil state into a state of 
enmity. 

We see, then, in what sense we may say, that a 
commonwealth is bound by laws and can do wrong. 
But if by “law” we understand civil law, and by 
“wrong” that which, by civil law, is forbidden to be 
done, that is, if these words be taken in their proper 
sense, we cannot at all say that a commonwealth Is 
bound by laws or can do wrong. For the maxims 
and motives of fear and reverence which a common- 
wealth is bound to observe in its own interest, pertain 
not to civil jurisprudence, but to the law of Nature, 
since they cannot be vindicated by the civil law, but 
by the law of war. And a commonwealth is bound 
by them in no other sense than that in which in the 


328 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


state of Nature a man is bound to take heed that he 
preserve his independence and be not his own enemy, 
lest he should destroy himself; and in this taking 
heed lies not the subjection, but the liberty of human 
nature. But civil jurisprudence depends on the mere 
decree of the commonwealth, which is not bound to 
please any but itself, nor to hold anything to be good 
or bad, but what it judges to be such for itself. And, 
accordingly, it has not merely the right to avenge itself, 


or to lay down and interpret laws, but also to abolish 


the same, and to pardon any guilty person out of the 
fullness of its power. 

Contracts or laws, whereby the multitude transfers 
its right to one council or man, should without doubt 
be broken, when it is expedient for the general welfare 
to do so. But to decide this point, whether, that is, it 
be expedient for the general welfare to break them or 
not, is within the right of no private person, but of 
him only who holds dominion; therefore of these laws 
he who holds dominion remains sole interpreter. 
Moreover, no private person can by right vindicate 
these laws, and so they do not really bind him who 
holds dominion. Notwithstanding, if they are of such 
a nature that they cannot be broken without at the 
same time weakening the commonwealth’s strength, 
that is, without at the same time changing to indigna- 
tion the common fear of most of the citizens, by this 
very fact the commonwealth is dissolved, and the con- 
tract comes to an end; and therefore such contract is 
vindicated not by the civil law, but by the law of war. 
And so he who holds dominion is not bound to observe 
the terms of the contract by any other cause than that, 


— a tS 


OF SUPREME AUTHORITIES 329 


which bids a man in the state of Nature to beware of 
being his own enemy, lest he should destroy himself. 


TIT 
Of the Best State of a Dominion} 


We have shown that man is then most independent 
when he is most led by reason, and, in consequence, 
that that commonwealth is most powerful and most in- 
dependent which is founded and guided by reason. 
But, as the best plan of living, so as to assure to the 
utmost self-preservation, is that which is framed ac- 
cording to the dictate of reason, therefore it follows 
that that in every kind is best done, which a man or 
commonwealth does, so far as he or it is in the highest 
degree independent. For it is one thing to till a field 
by right, and another to till it in the best way. One 
thing, I say, to defend or preserve oneself, and to 
pass judgment by right, and another to defend or 
preserve oneself in the best way, and to pass the 
best judgment; and, consequently, it is one thing to 
have dominion and care of affairs of state by right, 
and another to exercise dominion and direct affairs of 
State in the best way. And so, as we have treated of 
the right of every commonwealth in general, it is time 
to treat of the best state of every dominion. 

Now the quality of the state of any dominion is easily 
perceived from the end of the civil state, which end is 
nothing else but peace and security of life. And there- 
fore that dominion is the best, where men pass their 
lives in unity, and the laws are kept unbroken. For 
it is certain, that seditions, wars, and contempt or 


1From A Political Treatise, ch. v, same title. 


330 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


breach of the laws are not so much to be imputed to 
the wickedness of the subjects, as to the bad state of a 
dominion. For men are not born fit for citizenship, 
but must be made so. Besides, men’s natural passions 
are everywhere the same; and if wickedness more pre- 
vails, and more offenses are committed in one common- 
wealth than in another, it is certain that the former 
has not enough pursued the end of unity, nor framed 
its laws with sufficient forethought; and that, there- 
fore, it has failed in making quite good its right as a 
commonwealth. For a civil state, which has not done 
away with the causes of seditions, where war is a per- 
petual object of fear, and where, lastly, the laws are 
often broken, differs but little from the mere state of 
Nature, in which every one lives after his own mind 
at the great risk of his life. 

But as the vices and inordinate license and con- 
tumacy of subjects must be imputed to the common- 
wealth, so, on the other hand, their virtue and constant 
obedience to the laws are to be ascribed in the main 
to the virtue and perfect right of the commonwealth. 
And so it is deservedly reckoned to Hannibal as an 
extraordinary virtue, that in his army there never 
arose a Sedition. 

Of a commonwealth, whose subjects are but hindered 
by terror from taking arms, it should rather be said, 
that it is free from war, than that it has peace. For 
peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that 
springs from force of character: for obedience is the 
constant will to execute what, by the general decree 
of the commonwealth, ought to be done. Besides, that 
commonwealth whose peace depends on the sluggish- 


OF SUPREME AUTHORITIES 331 


ness of its subjects, that are led about like sheep to 
learn but slavery, may more properly be called a desert 
than a commonwealth. 

When, then, we call that dominion best, where men 
pass their lives in unity, I understand a human life, 
defined not by mere circulation of the blood, and other 
qualities common to all animals, but above all by 
reason, the true excellence and life of the mind. 

But be it remarked that, by the dominion which I 
have said is established for this end, I intend that 
which has been established by a free multitude, not 
that which is acquired over a multitude by right of 
war. For a free multitude is guided more by hope 
than fear; a conquered one, more by fear than by 
hope: inasmuch as the former aims at making use of 
life, the latter but at escaping death. The former, I 
say, aims at living for its own ends, the latter is forced 
to belong to the conqueror; and so we say that this 
is enslaved, but that free. And, therefore, the end 
of a dominion, which one gets by right of war, is to be 
master, and have rather slaves than subjects. And 
although between the dominion created by a free mul- 
titude, and that gained by right of war, if we regard 
generally the right of each, we can make no essential 
distinction; yet their ends, as we have already shown, 
and further the means to the preservation of each are 
very different. 

But what means a prince, whose sole motive is lust 
of mastery, should use to establish and maintain his 
dominion, the most ingenious Machiavelli has set forth 
at large,’ but with what design one can hardly be sure, 


1In his book called “Il Principe,” or “The Prince.” 


Doe THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


If, however, he had some good design, as one should 
believe of a learned man, it seems to have been to 
show, with how little foresight many attempt to remove 
a tyrant, though thereby the causes which make the 
prince a tyrant can in no wise be removed, but, on 
the contrary, are so much the more established, as 
the prince is given more cause to fear, which happens 
when the multitude has made an example of its prince, 
and glories in the parricide as in a thing well done. 
Moreover, he perhaps wished to show how cautious a 
free multitude should be of entrusting its welfare abso- 
lutely to one man, who, unless in his vanity he thinks 
he can please everybody, must be in daily fear of 
plots, and so is forced to look chiefly after his own 
interest, and, as for the multitude, rather to plot against 
it than consult its good. And I am the more led to this 
opinion concerning that most far-seeing man, because 
it is known that he was favorable to liberty, for the 
maintenance of which he has besides given the most 
wholesome advice. 


kes 


CHAPTER XVIII 
FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH? 


Ir men’s minds were as easily controlled as their 
tongues, every king would sit safely on his throne, 
and government by compulsion would cease; for every 
subject would shape his life according to the intentions 
of his rulers, and would esteem a thing true or false, 
good or evil, just or unjust, in obedience to their dic- 
tates. However, ...no man’s mind can possibly 
lie wholly at the disposition of another, for no one 
can willingly transfer his natural right of free reason 
and judgment, or be compelled so to do. For this 
reason government which attempts to control minds is 
accounted tyrannical, and it is considered an abuse of 
sovereignty and a usurpation of the rights of subjects 
to seek to prescribe what shall be accepted as true, or 
rejected as false, or what opinions should actuate men 
in their worship of God. All these questions fall 
within a man’s natural right, which he cannot abdicate 
even with his own consent. 

I admit that the judgment can be biased in many 
ways, and to an almost incredible degree, so that while 
exempt from direct external control it may be so de- 
pendent on another man’s words, that it may fitly be 
said to be ruled by him; but although this influence 
is carried to great lengths, it has never gone so far 


1 From the Tr. Th.-P., ch. xx., same title. 
333 


334. THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


as to invalidate the statement that every man’s under- 
standing is his own, and that brains are as diverse as 
palates. 

Moses, not by fraud, but by Divine virtue, gained 
such a hold over the popular judgment that he was 
accounted superhuman, and believed to speak and act 
through the inspiration of the Deity; nevertheless, 
even he could not escape murmurs and evil interpreta- 
tions. How much less then can other monarchs avoid 
them! Yet such unlimited power, if it exists at all, 
must belong to a monarch, and least of all to a de- 
mocracy, where the whole or a great part of the people 
wield authority collectively. This is a fact which I 
think every one can explain for himself. 

However unlimited, therefore, the power of a sover- 
eizn may be, however implicitly it is trusted as the 
exponent of law and religion, it can never prevent men 
from forming judgments according to their intellect, 
or being influenced by any given emotion. It is true 
that it has the right to treat as enemies all men whose 
opinions do not, on all subjects, entirely coincide with 
its own; but we are not discussing its strict rights, but 
its proper course of action. I grant that it has the 
right to rule in the most violent manner, and to put 
citizens to death for very trivial causes, but no one 
supposes it can do this with the approval of sound 
judgment. Nay, inasmuch as such things cannot be 
done without extreme peril to itself, we may even deny 
that it has the absolute power to do them, or, conse- 
quently, the absolute right; for the rights of the sover- 
elgn are limited by his power. 

Since, therefore, no one can abdicate his freedom 


- 
aight ers ace 


FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH 335 


of judgment and feeling; since every man is by inde- 
feasible natural right the master of his own thoughts, 
it follows that men, thinking in diverse and contradic- 
tory fashions, cannot, without disastrous results, be 
compelled to speak only according to the dictates of 
the supreme power. Not even the most experienced, 
to say nothing of the multitude, know how to keep 
silence. Men’s common failing is to confide their 
plans to others, though there be need for secrecy, so 
that a government would be most harsh which de- 
prived the individual of his freedom of saying and 
teaching what he thought; and would be moderate if 
such freedom were granted. Still we cannot deny that 
authority may be as much injured by words as by 
actions. Hence, although the freedom we are discussing 
cannot be entirely denied to subjects, its unlimited 
concession would be most baneful; we must, therefore, 
now inquire, how far such freedom can and ought to 
be conceded without danger to the peace of the state, 
or the power of the rulers. 

It follows, plainly, from the explanation given above, 
of the foundations of a state, that the ultimate aim of 
government is not to rule, or restrain by fear, nor to 
exact obedience, but, contrariwise, to free every man 
from fear that he may live in all possible security; 
in other words, to strengthen his natural right to exist 
and work without injury to himself or others. 

No, the object of government is not to change men 
from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to 
enable them to develop their minds and bodies in se- 
curity, and to employ their reason unshackled; neither 
showing hatred, anger or deceit, nor watched with the 


336 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


eyes of jealousy and injustice. In fact, the true aim 
of government is liberty. 

Now we have seen that in forming a state the power 
of making laws must either be vested in the body of 
the citizens, or in a portion of them, or in one man. 
For, although men’s free judgments are very diverse, 
each one thinking that he alone knows everything, 
and although complete unanimity of feeling and speech 
is out of the question, it is impossible to preserve peace 
unless individuals abdicate their right of acting entirely 
on their own judgment. Therefore, the individual 
justly cedes the right of free action, though not of free 
reason and judgment; no one can act against the au- 
thorities without danger to the state, though his feel- 
ings and judgment may be at variance therewith; he 
may even speak against them, provided that he does 
so from rational conviction, not from fraud, anger or 
hatred, and provided that he does not attempt to intro- 
duce any change on his private authority. | 

For instance, supposing a man shows that a law is 
repugnant to sound reason, and should therefore be 
repealed; if he submits his opinion to the judgment 
of the authorities (who alone have the right of making 
and repealing laws), and meanwhile acts in nowise 
contrary to that law, he has deserved well of the state, 
and has behaved as a good citizen should; but if he 
accuses the authorities of injustice, and stirs up the 
people against them, or if he seditiously strives to 
abrogate the law without their consent, he is a mere 
agitator and rebel. 

Thus we see how an individual may declare and teach 
what he believes, without injury to the authority of 


FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH 337 


his rulers, or to the public peace; namely, by leaving 
in their hands the entire power of legislation as it 
affects action, and by doing nothing against their laws, 
though he be compelled often to act in contradiction 
to what he believes, and openly feels, to be best. 

Such a course can be taken without detriment to 
justice and dutifulness, nay, it is the one which a just 
and dutiful man would adopt. We have shown that 
justice is dependent on the laws of the authorities, so 
that no one who contravenes their accepted decrees can 
be just, while the highest regard for duty, as we have 
pointed out, is exercised in maintaining public peace 
and tranquillity. These could not be preserved if every. 
man were to live as he pleased. Therefore it is no less 
than undutiful for a man to act contrary to his coun- 
try’s laws, for if the practice became universal the ruin 
of states would necessarily follow. 

Hence, so long as a man acts in obedience to the 
laws of his rulers, he in nowise contravenes his reason, 
for in obedience to reason he transferred the right of 
controlling his actions from his own hands to theirs. 
This doctrine we can confirm from actual custom, 
for in a conference of great and small powers, schemes 
are seldom carried unanimously, yet all unite in carry- 
ing out what is decided on, whether they voted for or 
against. But I return to my proposition. 

From the fundamental notions of a state, we have 
discovered how a man may exercise free judgment 
without detriment to the supreme power: from the 
same premises we can no less easily determine what 
opinions would be seditious. Evidently those which 
by their very nature nullify the compact by which the 


338 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


right of free action was ceded. For instance, a man 
who holds that the supreme power has no rights over 
him, or that promises ought not to be kept, or that 
every one should live as he pleases, or other doctrines 
of this nature in direct opposition to the above- 
mentioned contract, is seditious, not so much from his 
actual opinions and judgment, as from the deeds which 
they involve; for he who maintains such theories abro- 
gates the contract which tacitly, or openly, he made 
with his rulers. Other opinions which do not involve acts 
violating the contract, such as revenge, anger, and the 
like, are not seditious, unless it be in some corrupt state, 
where superstitious and ambitious persons, unable to 
endure men of learning, are so popular with the multi- 
tude that their word is more valued than the law. 
However, I do not deny that there are some doctrines 
which, while they are apparently only concerned with 
abstract truths and falsehoods, are yet propounded 
and published with unworthy motives. . . . Reason 
should nevertheless remain unshackled. If we hold 
to the principle that a man’s loyalty to the state should 
be judged, like his loyalty to God, from his actions 
only—namely, from his charity towards his neighbors; 
we cannot doubt that the best government will allow 
treedom of philosophical speculation no less than of 
religious belief. I confess that from such freedom 
inconveniences may sometimes arise, but what question 
was ever settled so wisely than no abuses could pos- 
sibly spring therefrom? He who seeks to regulate 
everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than 
to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be 
abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How 





FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH 339 


many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunken- 
ness and the like, yet these are tolerated—vices as they 
are—because they cannot be prevented by legal enact- 
ments. How much more, then, should free thought be 
granted, seeing that it is in itself a virtue and that it 
cannot be crushed! Besides, the evil results can easily 
be checked, as I will show, by the secular authorities, 
not to mention that such freedom is absolutely neces- 
sary for progress in science and the liberal arts: for no 
man follows such pursuits to advantage unless his judg- 
ment be entirely free and unhampered. 

But let it be granted that freedom may be crushed, 
and men be so bound down that they do not dare to 
utter a whisper, save at the bidding of their rulers; 
nevertheless this can never be carried to the pitch of 
making them think according to authority, so that the 
necessary consequences would be that men would daily 
be thinking one thing and saying another, to the corrup- 
tion of good faith, that mainstay of government, and to 
the fostering of hateful flattery and perfidy, whence 
spring stratagems, and the corruption of every good art. 

It is far from possible to impose uniformity of speech, 
for the more rulers strive to curtail freedom of speech 
the more obstinately are they resisted; not indeed by 
the avaricious, the flatterers, and other numskulls, who 
think supreme salvation consists in filling their stom- 
achs and gloating over their money-bags, but by those 
whom good education, sound morality, and virtue have 
rendered more free. Men, as generally constituted, 
are most prone to resent the branding as criminal of 
opinions which they believe to be true, and the pro- 
scription as wicked of that which inspires them with 


340 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


piety towards God and man; hence they are ready 
to forswear the laws and conspire against the authori- 
ties, thinking it not shameful but honorable to stir up 
seditions and perpetuate any sort of crime with this 
end in view. Such being the constitution of human 
nature, we see that laws directed against opinions 
affect the generous minded rather than the wicked, 
and are adapted less for coercing criminals than for 
irritating the upright; so that they cannot be main- 
tained without great peril to the state. 

Moreover, such laws are almost always useless, for 
those who hold that the opinions proscribed are sound, 
cannot possibly obey the law; whereas those who al- 
ready reject them as false, accept the law as a kind 
of privilege, and make such boast of it, that authority 
is powerless to repeal it, even if such a course be sub- 
sequently desired. 

. . . And, lastly, how many schisms have arisen in 
the Church from the attempt of the authorities to 
decide by law the intricacies of theological contro- 
versy! If men were not allured by the hope of getting 
the law and the authorities on their side, of triumphing 
over their adversaries in the sight of an applauding 
multitude, and of acquiring honorable distinctions, 
they would not strive so maliciously, nor would such 
fury sway their minds. This is taught not only by 
reason but by daily examples, for laws of this kind 
orescribing what every man shall believe and forbid- 
ding any one to speak or write to the contrary, have 
often been passed as sops or concessions to the anger 
of those who cannot tolerate men of enlightenment, 
and who, by such harsh and crooked enactments, can 


Site. 
we. 


FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH 341 


easily turn the devotion of the masses into fury and 
direct it against whom they will. 

How much better would it be to restrain popular 
anger and fury, instead of passing useless laws, which 
can only be broken by those who love virtue and the 
liberal arts, thus paring down the state till it is too 
small to harbor men of talent. What greater mis- 
fortune for a state can be conceived than that honor- 
able men should be sent like criminals into exile, be- 
cause they hold diverse opinions which they cannot 
disguise? What, I say, can be more hurtful than 
that men who have committed no crime or wickedness 
should, simply because they are enlightened, be treated 
as enemies and put to death, and that the scaffold, the 
terror of evil-doers, should become the arena where 
the highest examples of tolerance and virtue are dis- 
played to the people with all the marks of ignominy 
that authority can devise? 

He that knows himself to be upright does not fear 
the death of a criminal, and shrinks from no punish- 
ment. His mind is not wrung with remorse for any 
disgraceful deed. He holds that death in a good cause 
is no punishment, but an honor, and that death for 
freedom is glory. 

What purpose, then, is served by the death of such 
men, what example is proclaimed? The cause for 
which they die is unknown to the idle and the foolish, 
hateful to the turbulent, loved by the upright. The 
only lesson we can draw from such scenes is to flatter 
the persecutor, or else to imitate the victim. 

If formal assent is not to be esteemed above con- 
viction, and if governments are to retain a firm hold 


342 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


of authority and not be compelled to yield to agitators, 
it is imperative that freedom of judgment should be 
granted, so that men may live together in harmony, 
however diverse, or even openly contradictory their 
opinions may be. We cannot doubt that such is the 
best system of government and open to the fewest ob- 
jections, since it is the one most in harmony with 
human nature. In a democracy (the most natural 
form of government) every one submits to the control 
of authority over his actions, but not over his judgment 
and reason; that is, seeing that all cannot think alike, 
the voice of the maiority has the force of law, subject 
to repeal if circumstances bring about a change of 
opinion. In proportion as the power of free judgment 
is withheld we depart from the natural condition of 
mankind, and consequently the government becomes 
more tyrannical. 

In order to prove that from such freedom no incon- 
venience arises which cannot easily be checked by the 
exercise of the sovereign power, and that men’s actions 
can easily be kept in bounds, though their opinions be 
at open variance, it will be well to cite an example. 
Such an one is not very far to seek. The city of Am- 
sterdam reaps the fruit of this freedom in its own great 
prosperity and in the admiration of all other people. 
For in this most flourishing state, and most splendid 
city, men of every nation and religion live together in 
the greatest harmony, and ask no questions before 
trusting their goods to a fellow-citizen, save whether he 
be rich or poor, and whether he generally acts honestly, 
or the reverse. His religion and sect is considered of 
no importance: for it has no effect before the judges 


FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH 343 


in gaining or losing a cause, and there is no sect so de- 
spised that its followers, provided that they harm no 
one, pay every man his due, and live uprightly, are de- 
prived of the protection of the magisterial authority. 

On the other hand, when the religious controversy 
between Remonstrants and Counter-Remonstrants 
began to be taken up by politicians and the States, it 
grew into a schism, and abundantly showed that laws 
dealing with religion and seeking to settle its contro- 
versies are much more calculated to irritate than to 
reform, and that they give rise to extreme license. 
Further, it was seen that schisms do not originate in a 
love of truth, which is a source of courtesy and gentle- 
ness, but rather in an inordinate desire for supremacy. 
From all these considerations it is clearer than the sun 
at noonday, that the true schismatics are those who 
condemn other men’s writings, and seditiously stir up 
the quarrelsome masses against their authors, rather 
than those authors themselves, who generally write 
only for the learned, and appeal solely to reason. In 
fact, the real disturbers of the peace are those who, 
in a free state, seek to curtail the liberty of judgment 
which they are unable to tyrannize over. 

I have thus shown:—I. That it is impossible to de- 
prive men of the liberty of saying what they think. 
II. That such liberty can be conceded to every man 
without injury to the rights and authority of the sover- 
eign power, and that every man may retain it without 
injury to such rights, provided that he does not pre- 
sume upon it to the extent of introducing any new 
rights into the state, or acting in any way contrary to 
the existing laws. MI. That every man may enjoy 


344 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


this liberty without detriment to the public peace, and 
that no inconveniences arise therefrom which cannot 
easily be checked. IV. That every man may enjoy it 
without injury to his allegiance. V. That laws dealing 
with speculative problems are entirely useless. VI. 
Lastly, that not only may such liberty be granted 
without prejudice to the public peace, to loyalty, and 
to the rights of rulers, but that it is even necessary 
for their preservation. For when people try to take it 
away, and bring to trial, not only the acts which alone 
are capable of offending, but also the opinions of man- 
kind, they only succeed in surrounding their victims 
with an appearance of martyrdom, and raise feelings 
of pity and revenge rather than of terror. Upright- 
ness and good faith are thus corrupted, flatterers and 
traitors are encouraged, and sectarians triumph, inas- 
much as concessions have been made to their animosity, 
and they have gained the state sanction for the doc- 
trines of which they are the interpreters. Hence they 
arrogate to themselves the state authority and rights, 
and do not scruple to assert that they have been di- 
rectly chosen by God, and that their laws are Divine, 
whereas the laws of the state are human, and should 
therefore yield obedience to the laws of God—in other 
words, to their own laws. Every one must see that this 
is not a state of affairs conducive to public welfare. 
Wherefore, the safest way for a state is to lay down 
the rule that religion is comprised solely in the exercise 
of charity and justice, and that the rights of rulers 
in sacred, no less than in secular matters, should merely 
have to do with actions, but that every man should 
think what he likes and say what he thinks. 


CHAPTER XIX 


OF HUMAN FREEDOM 


Introductory 


I pass at length to the other part of ethics which 
concerns the method or way which leads to liberty. 
In [the following], therefore, I shall treat of the power 
of reason, showing how much reason itself can control 
the emotions, and then what is freedom of mind or 
blessedness. ‘Thence we shall see how much stronger 
the wise man is than the ignorant. In what manner 
and what way the intellect should be rendered per- 
fect, and with what art the body is to be cared for in 
order that it may properly perform its functions, I 
have nothing to do with here; for the former belongs 
to logic, the latter to medicine. I shall occupy myself 
here, as I have said, solely with the power of the mind 
or of reason, first of all showing the extent and nature 
of the authority which it has over the emotions in re- 
straining them and governing them; for that we have 
not absolute authority over them we have already 
demonstrated. The Stoics indeed thought that the 
emotions depend absolutely on our will, and that we are 
absolutely masters over them; but they were driven, 
by the contradiction of experience, though not by their 
own principles, to confess that not a little practice and 
study are required in order to restrain and govern the 


emotions. This one of them attempted to illustrate, if I 
345 


346 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


remember rightly, by the example of two dogs, one 
of a domestic and the other of a hunting breed; for 
he was able by habit to make the house dog hunt, and 
the hunting dog, on the contrary, to desist from run- 
ning after hares. 

To the Stoical opinion Descartes much inclines. He 
affirms that the soul or mind is united specially to a 
certain part of the brain called the pineal gland, which 
the mind by the mere exercise of the will is able to 
move in different ways, and by whose help the mind 
perceives all the movements which are excited in the 
body and external objects. This gland, he affirms, is 
suspended in the middle of the brain in such a manner 
that it can be moved by the least motion of the animal 
spirits. Again, he affirms that any variation in the 
manner in which the animal spirits impinge upon this 
gland is followed by a variation in the manner in which 
it is suspended in the middle of the brain, and moreover 
that the number of different impressions on the gland 
is the same as that of the different external objects 
which propel the animal spirits toward it. Hence 
it comes to pass that if the gland, by the will of the 
soul moving it in different directions, be afterwards 
suspended in this or that way in which it had once been 
suspended by the spirits agitated in this or that way, 
then the gland itself will propel and determine the ani- 
mal spirits themselves in the same way as that in which 
they had before been repelled by a similar suspension 
of the gland. Moreover, he affirmed that each volition 
of the mind is united in Nature to a certain motion of 
the gland. For example, if a person wishes to behold a 
remote object, this volition will cause the pupil of the 





OF HUMAN FREEDOM 347 


eye to dilate, but if he thinks merely of the dilation of 
the pupil, to have that volition will profit him nothing, 
because Nature has not connected a motion of the 
gland which serves to impel the animal spirits towards 
the optic nerve in a way suitable for dilation or con- 
traction of the pupil with the volition or dilation or 
contraction, but only with the volition of beholding 
objects afar off or close at hand. Finally, he maintained 
that although each motion of this gland appears to be 
connected by Nature from the commencement of our 
life with an individual thought, these motions can 
nevertheless be connected by habit with other thoughts, 
a proposition which he attempts to demonstrate in his 
“Passions of the Soul” (art. 50, pt. 1). 

From this he concludes that there is no mind so 
feeble that it cannot, when properly directed, acquire 
absolute power over its passions; for passions, as de- 
fined by him, are “perceptions, or sensations, or emo- 
tions of the soul which are related to it specially, and 
which (N. B.) are produced, preserved, and strength- 
ened by some motion of the spirits.” (See the ‘‘Pas- 
sions of Soul,” art. 27, pt. 1.) But since it is possible 
to join to a certain volition any motion of the gland, 
and consequently of the spirits, and since the determi- 
nation of the will depends solely on our power, we shall 
be able to acquire absolute mastery over our passions 
provided only we determine our will by fixed and firm 
decisions by which we desire to direct our actions and 
bind with these decisions the movements of the pas- 
sions we wish to have. 

So far as I can gather from his own words, this is 
the opinion of that distinguished man, and I could 


348 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


scarcely have believed it possible for one so great to 
have put it forward if it had been less subtle. I can 
hardly wonder enough that a philosopher who firmly 
resolved to make no deduction except from self-evident 
principles, and to affirm nothing but what he clearly 
and distinctly perceived, and who blamed all the School- 
men because they desired to explain obscure matters 
by occult qualities, should accept a hypothesis more 
occult than any occult quality. 

What does he understand, I ask, by the union of 
the mind and body? What clear and distinct con- 
ception has he of thought intimately connected with 
a certain small portion of matter? I wish that he had 
explained this union by its proximate cause. But he 
conceived the mind to be so distinct from the body 
that he was able to assign no single cause of this union, 
nor of the mind itself, but was obliged to have re- 
course to the cause of the whole universe, that is to 
say, to God. Again, I should like to know how many 
degrees of motion the mind can give to that pineal 
gland, and with how great a power the mind can hold 
it suspended. For I do not understand whether this 
gland is acted on by the mind more slowly or more 
quickly than by the animal spirits, and whether the 
movements of the passions, which we have so closely 
bound with firm decisions, might not be separated 
from them again by bodily causes, from which it would 
follow that although the mind had firmly determined 
to meet danger, and had joined to this decision the 
motion of boldness, the sight of the danger might 
cause the gland to be suspended in such a manner that 
the mind could think of nothing but flight. Indeed, 


OF HUMAN FREEDOM 349 


since there is no relation between the will and motion, 
so there is no comparison between the power or 
strength of the body and that of the mind, and con- 
sequently the strength of the body can never be de- 
termined by the strength of the mind. It is to be 
remembered also that this gland is not found to be so 
situated in the middle of the brain that it can be driven 
about so easily and in so many ways, and that all the 
nerves are not extended to the cavities of the brain. 

Lastly, I omit all that Descartes asserts concerning 
the will and the freedom of the will, since I have shown 
over and over again that it is false. Therefore, inas- 
much as the power of the mind, as I have shown above, 
is determined by intelligence alone, we shall determine 
by the knowledge of the mind alone the remedies 
against the emotions—remedies which every one, I be- 
lieve, has experienced, although there may not have 
been any accurate observation or distinct perception of 
them, and from this knowledge of the mind alone shall 
we deduce everything which relates to its blessedness. 


Axioms 
I. If two contrary actions be excited in the same 
subject, a change must necessarily take place in both, 
or in one alone, until they cease to be contrary. 
II. The power of an emotion is limited by the power 


of its cause, in so far as the essence of the emotion is 
manifested or limited by the essence of the cause itself. 


The Strength of the Emotions 


The emotion towards an object which we imagine to 
be free is greater than towards one which is necessary, 


350 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


and consequently still greater than towards one which 


we imagine as possible or contingent. But to imagine 
an object as free can be nothing else than to imagine 
it simply, while we know not the causes by which it 
was determined to action. An emotion, therefore, to- 
wards an object which we simply imagine is, other 
things being equal, greater than towards one which 
we imagine as necessary, possible, or contingent, and 
consequently greatest of all. 

The mind understands all things to be necessary 
and determined by an infinite chain of causes to exist- 
ence and action, and therefore so far enables itself to 
suffer less from the emotions which arise from these 
things, and to be less affected towards them. 

The more this knowledge that things are necessary 
is applied to individual things which we imagine more 
distinctly and more vividly, the greater is this power 
of the mind over the emotions—a fact to which expe- 
rience also testifies. For we see that sorrow for the 
loss of anything good is diminished if the person who 
has lost it considers that it could not by any possibility 
have been preserved. So also we see that nobody 
pities an infant because it does not know how to speak, 
walk, or reason, and lives so many years not conscious, 
as it were, of itself. But if a number of human beings 
were born adult, and only a few here and there were 
born infants, every one would pity the infants, be- 
cause we should then consider infancy not as a thing 
natural and necessary, but as a defect or fault of Na- 
ture. Many other facts of a similar kind we might 
observe. 

We do not contemplate an object as absent by reason 


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OF HUMAN FREEDOM Sot 


of the emotion by which we imagine it, but by reason of 
the fact that the body is affected with another modifica- 
tion, which excludes the existence of that object. The 
emotion, therefore, which is related to an object which 
we contemplate as absent, is not of such a nature as 
to overcome the other actions and power of man, but, 
on the contrary, is of such a nature that it can in some 
way be restrained by those modifications which exclude 
the existence of its external cause. But the emotion 
which arises from reason is necessarily related to the 
common properties of things, which we always con- 
template as present for nothing can exist which ex- 
cludes their present existence, and which we always 
imagine in the same way. This emotion, therefore, al- 
ways remains the same, and consequently the emotions 
which are contrary to it, and which are not maintained 
by their external cause, must more and more accom- 
modate themselves to it until they are no longer con- 
trary toit. So far, therefore, the emotion which springs 
from reason is the stronger. 

A number of simultaneous causes can do more than 
if they were fewer, and therefore the greater the num- 
ber of the simultaneous causes by which an emotion is 
excited, the greater it is. 

An emotion is bad or injurious only in so far as it 
hinders the mind from thinking and therefore that 
emotion by which the mind is determined to the con- 
templation of a number of objects at the same time 
is less injurious than another emotion equally great 
which holds the mind in the contemplation of one ob- 
ject alone or of a few objects, so that it cannot think of 
others. Again, since the essence of the mind, that is 


352 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


to say, its power, consists in thought alone, the mind” 
suffers less through an emotion by which it is deter- 

mined to the contemplation of a number of objects at 

the same time than through an emotion equally great 

which holds it occupied in the contemplation of one 

object alone or of a few objects. Finally, this emotion, 

in so far as it is related to a number of external causes, 

is therefore less towards each. 


The Power of the Intellect Over the Emotions 
I 
General Principles 


The order and connection of ideas is the same as the 
order and connection of things, and vice versa, the 
order and connection of things is the same as the order 
and connection of ideas. Therefore, as the order and 
connection of ideas in the mind is according to the order 
and connection of the modifications of the body it fol- 
lows vice versa, that the order and connection of the 
modifications of the body is according to the order and 
connection in the mind of the thoughts and ideas of 
things. 

If we detach an emotion of the mind from the thought 
of an external cause and connect it with other thoughts, 
then the love or hatred towards the external cause and 
the fluctuations of the mind which arise from these 
emotions will be destroyed. 

An emotion which is a passion is a confused idea. If, 
therefore, we form a clear and distinct idea of this 
emotion, the idea will not be distinguished—except by 
reason—{from this emotion, in so far as the emotion 


OF HUMAN FREEDOM Joa 


is related to the mind alone, and therefore the emotion 
will cease to be a passion. 

In proportion, then, as we know an emotion better 
is it more within our control, and the less does the mind 
suffer from it. 

Those things which are common to all cannot be 
otherwise than adequately conceived and _ therefore 
there is no modification of the body of which we cannot 
form some clear and distinct conception. 

Hence it follows that there is no emotion of which 
we cannot form some clear and distinct conception. 
For an emotion is an idea of a modification of the body, 
and this idea therefore must involve some clear and 
distinct conception. 

Since nothing exists from which some effect does 
not follow, and since we understand clearly and dis- 
tinctly everything which follows from an idea which 
is adequate in us, it is a necessary consequence that 
every one has the power, partly at least, if not abso- 
lutely, of understanding clearly and distinctly himself 
and his emotions, and consequently of bringing it to 
pass that he suffers less from them. We have therefore 
mainly to strive to acquire a clear and distinct knowl- 
edge as far as possible of each emotion, so that the mind 
may be led to pass from the emotion to think those 
things which it perceives clearly and distinctly, and with 
which it is entirely satisfied, and to strive also that 
the emotion may be separated from the thought of an 
external cause and connected with true thoughts. Thus 
not only love, hatred, etc., will be destroyed, but also 
the appetites or desires to which the emotion gives rise 
cannot be excessive. For it is above everything to be 


354 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


observed that the appetite by which a man is said to 
act is one and the same appetite as that by which he 
is said to suffer. For example, we have shown that 
human nature is so constituted that every one desires 
that other people should live according to his way of 
thinking, a desire which in a man who is not guided by 
reason Is a passion which is called ambition, and is not 
very different from pride; while, on the other hand, 
in a man who lives according to the dictates of reason 
it is an action or virtue which is called piety. In the 
same manner, all the appetites or desires are passions 
only in so far as they arise from inadequate ideas, and 
are classed among the virtues whenever they are ex- 
cited or begotten by adequate ideas; for all the desires 
by which we are determined to any action may arise 
either from adequate or inadequate ideas. To return, 
therefore, to the point from which we set out: there 
is no remedy within our power which can be conceived 
more excellent for the emotions than that which consists 
in true knowledge of them, since the mind possesses 
no other power than that of thinking and forming 
adequate ideas, as we have shown above. 


II 
The Natural Basis of Rational Control 


The greater the number of objects to which an 
image or emotion is related, the greater is the number 
of causes by which it can be excited and cherished. 
All these causes the mind contemplates simultaneously 
by means of the emotion (by hypothesis), and there- 
fore the more constant is the emotion, or the more fre- 





OF HUMAN FREEDOM 305 


quently does it present itself, and the more does it 
occupy the mind. 

Things which we clearly and distinctly understand 
are either the common properties of things or what 
are deduced from them, and consequently are more 
frequently excited in us; and therefore it is easier for 
us to contemplate other things together with these 
which we clearly and distinctly understand than with 
any others, and consequently it is easier to connect 
things with these which we clearly and distinctly under- 
stand than with any others. 

The greater the number of other things with which 
any image is connected, the more frequently does it 
present itself. For the greater the number of other 
things with which an image is connected, the greater 
is the number of causes by which it may be excited. 

There is no modification of the body of which the 
mind cannot form some clear and distinct conception 
and therefore it can cause all the modifications of the 
body to be related to the idea of God. 


III 
The Function of the Intellectual Order 


The emotions which are contrary to our nature, that 
is to say, which are evil, are evil so far as they hinder 
the mind from understanding. So long, therefore, as 
we are not agitated by emotions which are contrary to 
our nature, so long the power of the mind by which it 
endeavors to understand things is not hindered, and 
therefore so long does it possess the power of forming 
clear and distinct ideas, and of deducing them the one 
from the other. So long, consequently, do we possess 


356 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


the power of arranging and connecting the modifica- 
tions of the body according to the order of the intellect. 

Through this power of properly arranging and con- 
necting the modifications of the body we can prevent 
ourselves from being easily affected by evil emotions. 
For a greater power is required to restrain emotions 
which are arranged and connected according to the 
order of the intellect than is required to restrain those 
which are uncertain and unsettled. The best thing, 
therefore, we can do, so long as we lack a perfect 
knowledge of our emotions, is to conceive a right rule 
of life, or sure maxims (dogmata) of life—to commit 
these latter to memory, and constantly to apply them to 
the particular cases which frequently meet us in life, 
so that our imagination may be widely affected by them, 
and they may always be ready to hand. For example, 
amongst the maxims of life we have placed this, that 
hatred is to be conquered by love or generosity, and is 
not to be met with hatred in return. But in order that 
we may always have this prescript of reason in read- 
iness whenever it will be of service, we must think 
over and often meditate upon the common injuries in- 
flicted by men, and consider how and in what way 
they may best be repelled by generosity; for thus we 
shall connect the image of injury with the imagination 
of this maxim, and it will be at hand whenever an 
injury is offered to us. If we also continually have 
regard to our own true profit, and the good which 
follows from mutual friendship and common fellowship, 
and remember that the highest peace of mind arises 
from a right rule of life, and also that man, like other 
things, acts according to the necessity of Nature, then 


OF HUMAN FREEDOM Don 


the injury or the hatred which usually arises from that 
necessity will occupy but the least part of the imagina- 
tion, and will be easily overcome: or supposing that 
the anger which generally arises from the greatest in- 
juries is not so easily overcome, it will nevertheless be 
overcome, although not without fluctuation of mind, 
in a far shorter space of time than would have been 
necessary if we had not possessed those maxims on 
which we had thus meditated beforehand. 

Concerning strength of mind, we must reflect in the 
same way for the purpose of getting rid of fear, that 
is to say, we must often enumerate and imagine the 
common dangers of life, and think upon the manner in 
which they can best be avoided and overcome by pres- 
ence of mind and courage. It is to be observed, how- 
ever, that in the ordering of our thoughts and images 
we must always look to those qualities which in each 
thing are good, so that we may be determined to action 
always by an emotion of joy. 

For example, if a man sees that he pursues glory 
too eagerly, let him think on its proper use, for what 
end it is to be followed, and by what means it can be 
obtained; but let him not think upon its abuse and 
vanity, and on the inconstancy of men, and things of 
this sort, about which no one thinks unless through 
disease of mind. For with such thoughts do those who 
are ambitious greatly torment themselves when they 
despair of obtaining the honors for which they are 
striving; and while they vomit forth rage, wish to be 
thought wise. Indeed it is certain that those covet 
glory the most who are loudest in declaiming against 
its abuse and the vanity of the world. Nor is this a 


358 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


peculiarity of the ambitious, but is common to all to 
whom fortune is adverse and who are impotent in 
mind; for we see that a poor and avaricious man is 
never weary of speaking about the abuse of money 
and the vices of the rich, thereby achieving nothing 
save to torment himself and show to others that he 
is unable to bear with equanimity not only his own 
poverty but also the wealth of others. So also a man 
who has not been well deceived by his mistress thinks 
of nothing but the fickleness of women, their faith- 
lessness, and their other oft-proclaimed failing—all 
of which he forgets as soon as he is taken into favor by 
his mistress again. He, therefore, who desires to 
govern his emotions and appetites from a love of liberty 
alone will strive as much as he can to know virtues 
and their causes, and to fill his mind with that joy 
which springs from a true knowledge of them. Least 
of all will he desire to contemplate the vices of men 
and disparage men, or to delight in a false show of 
liberty. He who will diligently observe these things 
(and they are not difficult), and will continue to prac- 
tice them, will assuredly in a short space of time be 
able for the most part to direct his actions in accord- 
ance with the command of reason. 


IV 
Summary 


I have, in what has preceded, included all the reme- 
dies for the emotions, that is to say, everything which 
the mind, considered in itself alone, can do against 
them. It appears therefrom that the power of the mind 
over the emotions consists— 





OF HUMAN FREEDOM 359 


1. In the knowledge itself of the emotions. 

2. In the separation by the mind of the emotions 
from the thought of an external cause, which we imag- 
Ine confusedly. 

3. In duration, in which the emotions which are 
related to objects we understand surpass those related 
to objects conceived in a mutilated or confused manner. 

4. In the multitude of causes by which the emotions 
which are related to the common properties of things 
or to God are nourished. 

5. In the order in which the mind can arrange its 
emotions and connect them one with the other. 

But that this power of the mind over the emotions 
may be better understood, it is to be carefully observed 
that we call the emotions great when we compare the 
emotion of one man with that of another, and see that 
one man is agitated more than another by the same 
emotion, or when we compare the emotions of one and 
the same man with one another, and discover that he is 
affected or moved more by one emotion than by an- 
other. 

For the power of any emotion is limited by the power 
of the external cause as compared with our own power. 
But the power of the mind is limited solely by knowl- 
edge, whilst impotence or passion is estimated solely 
by privation of knowledge, or, in other words, by 
that through which ideas are called inadequate; and 
it therefore follows that that mind suffers the most 
whose largest part consists of inadequate ideas, so that 
it is distinguished rather by what it suffers than by 
what it does, while, on the contrary, that mind acts 
the most whose largest part consists of adequate ideas, 


360 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


so that although it may possess as many inadequate 
ideas as the first, it is nevertheless distinguished rather 
by those which belong to human virtue than by those 
which are a sign of human impotence. Again, it is to 
be observed that our sorrows and misfortunes mainly 
proceed from too much love towards an object which 
is subject to many changes, and which we can never 
possess. For no one is troubled or anxious about any 
object he does not love, neither do wrongs, suspicions, 
hatreds, etc., arise except from love towards objects 
of which no one can be truly the possessor. 

From all this we easily conceive what is the power 
which clear and distinct knowledge, and especially that 
third kind of knowledge whose foundation is the knowl- 
edge itself of God, possesses over the emotions; the 
power, namely, by which it is able, in so far as they 
are passions, if not actually to destroy them, at least 
to make them constitute the smallest part of the mind. 
Moreover, it begets a love towards an immutable and 
eternal object of which we are really partakers; a love 
which therefore cannot be vitiated by the defects which 
are in common love, but which can always become 
greater and greater, occupy the largest part of the 
mind, and thoroughly affect it. 

I have now concluded all that I had to say relating 
to this present life. For any one who will attend to 
what has been urged will easily be able to see the truth 
of what I said—that in these few words all the remedies 
for the emotions are comprehended. It is time, there- 
fore, that I should now pass to the consideration of 
those matters which appertain to the duration of the 
mind without relation to the body. 


Lan eae 
> ors 


CHAPTER XX 


OF HUMAN BLESSEDNESS AND THE 
ETERNITY OF THE MIND 


Human Blessedness: The Intellectual Love of God 
I 


Tue third kind of knowledge proceeds from an 
adequate idea of certain attributes of God to an ade- 
quate knowledge of the essence of things; and the more 
we understand things in this manner, the more we 
understand God; and therefore the highest virtue of the 
mind, that is to say, the power or nature of the mind, 
or the highest effort, is to understand things by the 

third kind of knowledge. 

The better the mind is adapted to understand things 
by the third kind of knowledge, the more it desires 
to understand them by this kind of knowledge. 

The highest virtue of the mind is to know God, or 
to understand things by the third kind of knowledge. 
This virtue is greater the more the mind knows things 
by this kind of knowledge, and therefore he who knows 
things by this kind of knowledge passes to the highest 
human perfection, and consequently is affected with 
the highest joy, which is accompanied with the idea 
of himself and his own virtue; and therefore from 
this kind of knowledge arises the highest possible peace 
of mind. 


The effort or the desire to know things by the third 
361 


362 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


kind of knowledge cannot arise from the first kind, 
but may arise from the second kind of knowledge. 
This propositon is self-evident. For everything that 
we clearly and distinctly understand, we understand 
either through itself or through something which is 
conceived through itself; or, in other words, ideas 
which are clear and distinct in us, or which are related 
to the third kind of knowledge, cannot follow from 
mutilated and confused ideas, which are related to 
the first kind of knowledge, but from adequate ideas, 
that is to say, from the second and third kinds of 
knowledge. 


II 


Eternity is the very essence of God, in so far as that 
essence involves necessary existence. To conceive 
things therefore under the form of eternity, is to con- 
ceive them in so far as they are conceived through 
the essence of God as actually existing things, or in so 
far as through the essence of God they involve exist- 
ence. Therefore our mind, in so far as it conceives 
itself and its body under the form of eternity, neces- 
sarily has a knowledge of God, and knows that it is in 
God and is conceived through Him. 

We delight in whatever we understand by the third 
kind of knowledge, and our delight is accompanied 
with the idea of God as its cause. 

From the third kind of knowledge necessarily springs 
the intellectual love of God. For from this kind of 
knowledge arises joy attended with the idea of God 
as its cause, that is to say, the love of God, not in so 
far aS we imagine Him as present, but in so far as we 


OF HUMAN BLESSEDNESS 363 


understand that He is eternal; and that is what I call 
the intellectual love of God. 

He who clearly and distinctly understands himself 
and his emotions rejoices, and his joy is attended with 
the idea of God, therefore he loves God, and (by the 
same reasoning) loves Him better the better he under- 
stands himself and his emotions. 

This intellectual love necessarily follows from the 
nature of the mind, in so far as it is considered, through 
the nature of God, as an eternal truth. If there were 
anything, therefore, contrary to this love, it would be 
contrary to the truth, and consequently whatever 
might be able to negate this love would be able to 
make the true false, which, as is self-evident, is ab- 
surd. There exists, therefore, nothing in Nature con- 
trary to this intellectual love, or which can negate it. 


III 


This love to God above everything else ought to 
occupy the mind, for this love is connected with all 
the modifications of the body, by all of which it is 
cherished. 

The idea of God which is in us is adequate and 
perfect, and therefore in so far as we contemplate God 
do we act and consequently no sorrow can exist with 
the accompanying idea of God; that is to say, no one 
can hate God. 

Love to God cannot be turned into hatred. But 
some may object, that if we understand God to be the 
cause of all things, we do for that very reason consider 
Him to be the cause of sorrow. But I reply, that in 
so far as we understand the causes of sorrow, it ceases 


364 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


to be a passion, that is to say, it ceases to be sorrow; 
and therefore in so far as we understand God to be 
the cause of sorrow do we rejoice. 

This love to God is the highest good which we can 
seek according to the dictate of reason; is common to 
all men; and we desire that all may enjoy it. It cannot, 
therefore, be sullied by the emotion of envy, nor by 
that of jealousy, but, on the contrary, it must be the 
more strengthened the more people we imagine to 
rejoice in it. 

It is possible to show in the same manner that there 
is no emotion directly contrary to this love and able to 
destroy it, and so we may conclude that this love te 
God is the most constant of all the emotions, and that, 
in so far’as it is related to the body, it cannot be de- 
stroyed unless with the body itself. What its nature 
is, in so far as it is related to the mind alone, we shall 
see hereafter. 


IV 


All ideas, in so far as they are related to God, are 
true; that is to say, are adequate, and therefore, (by 
the general definition of the Emotions), God is free from 
passions. Again, God can neither pass to a greater 
nor to a less perfection, and therefore He cannot be 
affected with any emotion of joy or sorrow. 

He who loves God cannot strive that God should 
love him in return. If a man were to strive after this, 
he would desire that God, whom he loves, should not 


be God, and consequently he would desire to be sad, 
which is absurd. 


OF HUMAN BLESSEDNESS 365 


Vv 


God is absolutely infinite, that is to say, the nature 
of God delights in infinite perfection accompanied with 
the idea of Himself, that is to say, with the idea of 
Himself as cause, and this is what we have called in- 
tellectual love. God loves Himself with an infinite 
intellectual love. 

The intellectual love of the mind towards God is the 
very love with which He loves Himself, not in so far 
as He is infinite, but in so far as He can be mani- 
fested through the essence of the human mind, con- 
sidered under the form of eternity; that is to say, the 
intellectual love of the mind towards God is part of 
the infinite love with which God loves Himself. 

Hence it follows that God, in so far as He loves 
Himself, loves men, and consequently that the love 
of God towards men and the intellectual love of the 
mind towards God are one and the same thing. 

Hence it follows that God, in so far as He loves 
Himself, loves men, and consequently that the love of 
the mind towards God are one and the same thing. 

Hence we clearly understand that our salvation, or 
blessedness, or liberty consists in a constant and eternal 
love towards God, or in the love of God towards men. 
This love or blessedness is called Glory in the sacred 
writings, and not without reason. For whether it be 
related to God or to the mind, it may properly be called 
repose of mind, which is, in truth, not distinguished 
from glory. For in so far as it is related to God, it is 
joy (granting that it is allowable to use this word), 
accompanied with the idea of Himself, and it is the 
same thing when it is related-to the mind. 


366 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


Again, since the essence of our mind consists in 
knowledge alone, whose beginning and foundation is 
God, it is clear to us in what manner and by what 
method our mind, with regard both to essence and 
existence, follows from the divine nature, and con- 
tinually depends upon God. I thought it worth while 
for me to notice this here, in order that I might show, 
by this example, what that knowledge of individual 
objects which I have called intuitive or of the third 
kind is able to do, and how much more potent it is 
than the universal knowledge, which I have called 
knowledge of the second kind. For although I have 
shown generally that all things, and consequently also 
the human mind, depend upon God both with regard 
to existence and essence, yet that demonstration, al- 
though legitimate, and placed beyond the possibility 
of a doubt, does not, nevertheless, so affect our mind 
as a proof from the essence itself of any individual 


object which we say depends upon God. The more 


we understand individual objects, the more we under- 
stand God. 


The Eternity of the Mind 
I 


The mind does not express the actual existence of its 
body, nor does it conceive as actual the modifications of 
the body, except while the body exists, and conse- 
quently it conceives no body as actually existing ex- 
cept while its own body exists. It can therefore imagine 
nothing, nor can it recollect anything that is past, ex- 
cept while the body exists. 


OF HUMAN BLESSEDNESS 367 


An imagination is an idea by which the mind con- 
templates any object as present. This idea neverthe- 
less indicates the present constitution of the human 
body rather than the nature of the external object. 
An emotion, therefore (by the general definition of the 
Emotions ), is an imagination in so far as it indicates the 
present constitution of the body, and therefore the 
mind, only so long as the body exists, is subject to 
emotions which are related to passions. 

Hence it follows that no love except intellectual love 
is eternal. 

If we look at the common opinion of men, we shall 
see that they are indeed conscious of the eternity of 
their minds, but they confound it with duration, and 
attribute it to imagination or memory, which they be- 
lieve remain after death. 

God is not only the cause of the existence of this or 
that human body, but also of its essence, which there- 
fore must necessarily be conceived through the essence 
of God itself and by a certain eternal necessity. This 
conception, moreover, must necessarily exist in God. 
In God there necessarily exists an idea which expresses 
the essence of this or that human body under the form 
of eternity. 

In God there necessarily exists a conception or idea 
which expresses the essence of the human body. This 
conception or idea is therefore necessarily something 
which pertains to the essence of the human mind. But 
we ascribe to the human mind no duration which can 
be limited by time, unless in so far as it expresses the 
actual existence of the body, which is manifested 
through duration, and which can be limited by time, 


368 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


that is to say, we cannot ascribe duration to the mind 
except while the body exists. 

But, nevertheless, since this something is that 
which is conceived by a certain eternal necessity 
through the essence itself of God, this something which 
pertains to the essence of the mind will necessarily be 
eternal. 

This idea which expresses the essence of the body 
under the form of eternity is, as we have said, a cer- 
tain mode of thought which pertains to the essence of 
the mind, and is necessarily eternal. It is impossible, 
nevertheless, that we should recollect that we existed 
before the body, because there are no traces of any 
such existence in the body, and also because eternity 
cannot be defined by time, or have any relationship 
to it. Nevertheless we feel and know by experience 
that we are eternal. For the mind is no less sensible 
of those things which it conceives through intelligence 
than of those which it remembers, for demonstrations — 
are the eyes of the mind by which it sees and observes 
things. 

Although, therefore, we do not recollect that we 
existed before the body, we feel that our mind, in so 
far as it involves the essence of the body under the 
form of eternity, is eternal, and that this existence of 
the mind cannot be limited by time nor manifested 
through duration. Only in so far, therefore, as it in- 
volves the actual existence of the body can the mind 
be said to possess duration, and its existence be limited 
by a fixed time, and so far only has it the power of 
determining the existence of things in time, and of 
conceiving them under the form of duration. 


OF HUMAN BLESSEDNESS 369 


II 


In so far as the mind conceives the present exist- 
ence of its body does it conceive duration which can 
be determined in time, and so far only has it the power 
of conceiving things in relation to time. But eternity 
cannot be manifested through duration, therefore the 
mind so far has not the power of conceiving things 
under the form of eternity: but because it is the na- 
ture of reason to conceive things under the form of 
eternity, and because it also pertains to the nature of 
the mind to conceive the essence of the body under 
the form of eternity, and excepting these two things 
nothing else pertains to the nature of the mind, there- 
fore this power of conceiving things under the form 
of eternity does not pertain to the mind except in so 
far as it conceives the essence of the body under the 
form of eternity. 

Things are conceived by us as actual in two ways; 
either in so far as we conceive them to exist with 
relation to a fixed time and place, or in so far as we 
conceive them to be contained in God, and to follow 
from the necessity of the divine nature. But those 
things which are conceived in this second way as true 
or real we conceive under the form of eternity, and 
their ideas involve the eternal and infinite essence of 
God. 

The mind conceives nothing under the form of 
eternity, unless in so far as it conceives the essence of 
its body under the form of eternity, that is to say, 
unless in so far as it is eternal. Therefore in so far 
as the mind is eternal it has a knowledge of God, which 
is necessarily adequate, and therefore in so far as it 


370 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


is eternal it is fitted to know all those things which can 
follow from this knowledge of God, that is to say, it is 
fitted to know things by the third kind of knowledge © 
of which, in so far as the mind is eternal, it is the ade- 
quate or formal cause. 

As each person therefore becomes stronger in this 
kind of knowledge, the more is he conscious of him- 
self and of God; that is to say, the more perfect and 
the happier he is, a truth which will still more clearly 
appear from what follows. Here, however, it is to be 
observed, that although we are now certain that the 
mind is eternal in so far as it conceives things under 
the form of eternity, yet, in order that what we wish 
to prove may be more easily explained and better un- 
derstood, we shall consider the mind, as we have 
hitherto done, as if it had just begun to be, and had 
just begun to understand things under the form of 
eternity. This we can do without any risk of error, 
provided only we are careful to conclude nothing ex- . 
cept from clear premises. 

The third kind of knowledge is eternal, and there- 
fore the love which springs from it is necessarily 
eternal. . 

Although this love to God has no beginning, it 
nevertheless has all the perfections of love, just as if 
it had originated. Nor is there here any difference, 
excepting that the mind has eternally possessed these 
same perfections which we imagined as now accruing 
to it, and has possessed them with the accompanying 
idea of God as the eternal cause. And if joy consist 
in the passage to a greater perfection, blessedness must 
indeed consist in this, that the mind is endowed with 
perfection itself, 





OF HUMAN BLESSEDNESS 371 
III 


The essence of the mind consists in knowledge. 
The more things, therefore, the mind knows by the 
second and third kinds of knowledge, the greater is 
that part which abides and consequently the greater 
is that part which is not touched by emotions which 
are contrary to our nature, that is to say, which 
are evil. The more things, therefore, the mind under- 
stands by the second and third kinds of knowledge, 
the greater is that part which remains unharmed, and 
the less consequently does it suffer from the emotions. 

We are thus enabled to understand that death is 
by so much the less injurious to us as the clear and 
distinct knowledge of the mind is greater, and conse- 
quently as the mind loves God more. Again, since 
from the third kind of knowledge there arises the 
highest possible peace, it follows that it is possible for 
the human mind to be of such a nature that that part 
of it which we have shown perishes with its body, in 
comparison with the part of it which remains, is of no 
consequence. But more fully upon this subject 
presently. 

He who possesses a body fitted for doing many things. 
is least of all agitated by those emotions which are evil, 
that is to say, by emotions which are contrary to our 
nature, and therefore he possesses the power of ar- 
ranging and connecting the modifications of the body 
according to the order of the intellect, and consequently 
of causing all the modifications of the body to be related 
to the idea of God; in consequence of which he is 
affected with a love to God, which must occupy or form 


Sie THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


the greatest part of his mind, and therefore he possesses 
a mind of which the greatest part is eternal. 

Inasmuch as human bodies are fit for many things, 
we cannot doubt the possibility of their possessing such 
a nature that they may be related to minds which have 
a large knowledge of themselves and of God, and whose 
greatest or principal part is eternal, so that they 
scarcely fear death. To understand this more clearly, 
it is to be here considered that we live in constant 
change, and that according as we change for the better 
or the worse we are called happy or unhappy. For he 
who passes from infancy or childhood to death is 
called unhappy, and, on the other hand, we consider 
ourselves happy if we can pass through the whole 
period of life with a sound mind in a sound body. 
Moreover, he who, like an infant or child, possesses 
a body fit for very few things, and, almost altogether 
dependent on external causes, has a mind which, con- 
sidered in itself alone, is almost entirely unconscious 
of itself, of God, and of objects. On the other hand, 
he who possesses a body fit for many things possesses 
a mind which, considered in itself alone, is largely con- 
scious of itself, of God, and of objects. In this life, 
therefore, it is our chief endeavor to change the body 
of infancy, so far as its nature permits and is conducive 
thereto, into another body which is fitted for many 
things, and which is related to a mind conscious as 
much as possible of itself, of God, and of objects; so 
that everything which is related to its memory or 
imagination, in comparison with the intellect is scarcely 
of any moment, as I have already said. 

The more perfect a thing is, the more reality it pos- 


OF HUMAN BLESSEDNESS 373 


sesses, and consequently the more it acts and the less 
it suffers. Inversely also it may be demonstrated in 
the same way that the more a thing acts the more per- 
fect it is. Hence it follows that that part of the mind 
which abides, whether great or small, is more perfect 
than the other part. For the part of the mind which is 
eternal is the intellect, through which alone we are said 
to act, but that part which, as we have shown, perishes, 
is the imagination itself, through which alone we are 
said to suffer. Therefore that part which abides, 
whether great or small, is more perfect than the 
latter. 

These are the things I proposed to prove con- 
cerning the mind, in so far as it is considered without 
relation to the existence of the body, and from these, 
and other propositions, it is evident that our mind, in 
so far as it understands, is an eternal mode of thought, 
which is determined by another eternal mode of 
thought, and this again by another, and so on ad mf- 
nitum, so that all taken together form the eternal and 
infinite intellect of God. 


Conclusion 


The primary and sole foundation of virtue or of the 
proper conduct of life is to seek our own profit. But 
in order to determine what reason prescribes as 
profitable, we had no regard to the eternity of the 
mind. Therefore, although we were at that time ig- 
nurant that the mind is eternal, we considered as of 
primary importance those things which we have shown 
are related to strength of mind and generosity; and 
therefore, even if we were now ignorant of the eternity 


374 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


of the mind, we should consider those commands of 
reason as of primary importance. 

The creed of the multitude seems to be different 
from this; for most persons seem to believe that they 
are free in so far as it is allowed them to obey their 
lusts, and that they give up a portion of their rights, 
in so far as they are bound to live according to the 
commands of divine law. Piety, therefore, and re- 
ligion,* and absolutely all those things that are related 
to greatness of soul, they believe to be burdens which 
they hope to be able to lay aside after death; hoping 
also to receive some reward for their bondage, that is 
to say, for thezr piety and religion. It is not merely 
this hope, however, but also and chiefly fear of dread- 
ful punishments after death, by which they are in- 
duced to live according to the commands of divine law, 
that is to say, as far as their feebleness and impotent 
mind will permit; and if this hope and fear were not 
present to them, but if they, on the contrary, believed 
that minds perish with the body, and that there is no 
prolongation of life for miserable creatures exhausted 
with the burden of their piety, they would return to 
ways of their own liking. They would prefer to let 
everything be controlled by their own passions, and to 
obey fortune rather than themselves. 

This seems to me as absurd as if a man, because he 
does not believe that he will be able to feed his body 
with good food to all eternity, should desire to satiate 
himself with poisonous and deadly drugs; or as if, be- 

1 Everything which we desire and do, of which we are the cause 
in so far as we possess an idea of God, or in so far as we know God, I 


refer to Religion. The desire of doing well which is born in us, 
because we live according to the guidance of reason, I call Piety. 


OF HUMAN BLESSEDNESS 373 


cause he sees that the mind is not eternal or immortal, 
he should therefore prefer to be mad and to live with- 
out reason—absurdities so great that they scarcely 
deserve to be repeated. 

Blessedness consists in love towards God, which 
arises from the third kind of knowledge, and this love, 
therefore, must be related to the mind in so far as it 
acts. Blessedness, therefore, is virtue itself. Again, 
the more the mind delights in this divine love or 
blessedness, the more it understands, that is to say, the 
greater is the power it has over its emotions and the 
less it suffers from emotions which are evil. Therefore, 
it is because the mind delights in this divine love or 
blessedness that it possesses the power of restraining 
the lusts; and because the power of man to restrain the 
emotions is in the intellect alone, no one, therefore, de- 
lights in blessedness because he has restrained his 
emotions, but, on the contrary, the power of restraining 
his lusts springs from blessedness itself. 

I have finished everything I wished to explain con- 
cerning the power of the mind over the emotions and 
concerning its liberty. From what has been said we 
see what is the strength of the wise man, and how 
much he surpasses the ignorant who is driven forward 
by lust alone. For the ignorant man is not only agi- 
tated by external causes in many ways, and never en- 
ioys true peace of soul, but lives also ignorant, as it 
were, both of God and of things, and as soon as he 
reases to suffer ceases also to be. On the other hand, 
the wise man, in so far as he is considered as such, is 
scarcely ever moved in his mind. but, being conscious 
by a certain eternal necessity of himself, of God, and 


376 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 


of things, never ceases to be, and always enjoys true 
peace of soul. 

If the way which, as I have shown, leads hither 
seem very difficult, it can nevertheless be found. It 
must indeed be difficult since it is so seldom discovered; 
for if salvation lay ready to hand and could be dis- 
covered without great labor, how could it be possible 
that it should be neglected almost by everybody? But 
all noble things are as difficult as they are rare, 


APPENDIX 


Spinoza’s Ethics, demonstrated in geometrical order, 
consists of five parts; from these parts the following 
selections have been taken: 


PART SAUL: 


DART: EL: 


Part IIL. 


Part IV. 


PAT Vv: 


Of God 

Definitions, Axioms, and the Appendix. 

Propositions: 11; 15-18; 26; 27; 29; 33. 

Of the Nature and Origin of the Mind 

Preface, Definitions, and Axioms. 

Propositions: I; 4-7; 11-13; 15-18; 24-26; 

28-32; 35; 30; 38-49. 

Of the Origin and Nature of the Emotions 

Preface, Definitions, and Postulates; Defini- 

tions of the Emotions. 

BTODOSILIONS  walowee A Ost Os mL Unt one LO 

18 3025 2773241403141, 43-40 3148781 505057. 

Of Human Bondage or Of the Strength of the 
Emotions 

Preface, Definitions, Axioms, and the Ap- 


pendix. 

Propositions: 3-9; I1-27; 38; 39; 41-473 

50-54; 56-58. 

Of the Power of the Intellect or Of Human 
Liberty 


Preface and Axioms. 
Propositions: 1-28; 30-42. 


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